Portugal Situation Report Saturday 5th June 2021
Introduction
Good morning – Clearly the most important decision over the last few days was the announcement by UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps that Portugal had been moved from the Green list to the Amber list with effect from flights arriving in England after 0400 hrs Tuesday 8th June 2021.
The reaction to this was predictable, with a considerable number of points made comparing the rate of new Covid-19 cases here to the UK, the issue of variants which according to the UK government formed part of their decision, as well as the timing of the decision itself. The president of Tourism of the Algarve, João Fernandes, classified as “political” the decision of the United Kingdom to remove Portugal from the “green list” of travels. He said “It is a decision that the British Government took as a matter of internal policy and not as a matter of risk”.
Whatever the reasons, Safe Communities Portugal is not in a position to provide a scientific analysis, but our headline story from Expresso, does provides a well-considered analysis on this subject using scientific data. It is worth a read.
What this decision does highlight yet again is that international travel, as was shown last year, is always going to carry with it a degree of risk. The risk is that leading up to the holiday or whilst you are away, the UK and other governments may review the situation and impose measures that considerably affect your arrangements. This can result in cancellation, or indeed if overseas scheduling an early return, if you can with greater expense. In this specific case this means quarantine upon return to England plus the need to take two PCR tests after arrival. Clearly in booking holidays overseas, people will need to take into account the risk of potentially going into quarantine plus the costs of tests for a family.
Regarding the latter there were comments that if the situation was urgent, why wait until nearly 6 days for implementation, others stating it was too rushed. Probably a no win situation as if it had been implemented with a deadline of one or two days, which happened last year, it would have left people virtually no time to obtain a negative test before returning to the UK.
As it was there was clearly going to be considerable pressure on the SYNLAB testing centre at Faro airport. This is what prompted the ANA authority to contact SCP yesterday morning to put out an urgent plea to tourists here, that unless they have already booked and confirmed a test, go to the many testing centres in the Algarve that provide this service. We published this yesterday together with the test centre list. Today there are nearly 100 departure flights scheduled with around 24,000 departing passengers for this weekend.
We have also brought to the attention to the authorities concerned of feedback on this post that some people are being informed by some private labs to go to the airport for testing. This is being dealt with to ensure the labs concerned are aware of the situation.
We would like to thank this urgent message reaching over 30,000 people and shared over 400 times since posting yesterday.
This shows importance of urgent communication through social media at its best and this is the same as what is needed in urgent crisis situations such as major rural fires, where accurate and quick communication, free from detracting personal comment is essential. Thank you therefore for the vast majority of you who respected the “no comment rules” so that those genuinely needing assistance could find it quickly. I would also like to thank those who posted relevant information to help others.
CP railway ticket office workers and inspectors are to carry out a national strike of three days between Sunday and Tuesday, 6th – 8th June, in protest against the proposed career regulation and demanding salary increases and compliance with the agreement of company. CP warn of significant disruption of services state on their website and that those who already have tickets to travel on Alfa Pendular, Intercidades, Internacional, InterRegional and Regional trains may request a refund of the total amount of the ticket purchased or its revalidation, free of charge. If you are on holiday here and travelling to and from the international airports by train please check with CP beforehand so you do not miss your flight
Lastly turning to fires, if the forecasts are correct we are likely to see by Tuesday next week a considerable increase in the fire risk in particular the north of the country. We having been given advice over the last two weeks on prevention measures, but it is also important for those in rural areas especially those that are prone to rural fires, to have a proper action plan in place in case a fire approaches your home. In a fast moving fire which may affect your home it is too late to come up with some ideas, so having a rehearsed plan that all the family are aware of essential.
I will be mentioning this on KissFM radio on Owen Gee’s Solid Gold Sunday around 0915 hrs this Sunday 6th June and will be posting on Facebook some tips.
Have a Safe weekend
Headlines
Portugal off the green list. “Caution”, “decision taken by the wrong people”, but “nothing against Portugal”, according to experts
Scientific knowledge does not explain the English decision to close the green corridor to Portugal based on the Nepalese mutation, but it will explain the excess of zeal, the political weight of not wanting to risk new confinement and wanting to “play it safe”, say the experts heard by Expresso. As for the mutation, it has not yet been recognized by the World Health Organization
What variant is this? When talking about the Nepalese mutation that was at the origin of the UK removing Portugal from the green corridor, the question seems valid even for specialists. What is known is that the outbreak that violently hit India eventually reached Nepal, a country where genomic sequencing is barely done. It is also known that among the identified variants, there is at least one case of the Delta variant, first found in India, which carries a mutation called K417N – the same one detected in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and India. In Japan it appeared 14 times (13 cases among travellers from Nepal), writes “The Guardian”, although it is not clear the variant started. And in Portugal, the Ricardo Jorge Institute claims that 12 cases were registered.
Altogether, no more than 90 cases have been registered so far, with the same K417N mutation being found in the Beta variant, first detected in South Africa.
For scientists, the Beta variant is a concern because there is evidence to suggest that it is partially resistant to vaccines. But the so-called Nepalese mutation, which appears to have evolved from Delta, is so recent that the World Health Organization (WHO) has not officially recognized it.
The framework serves for Tiago Correia, professor of International Health and researcher at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IHMT), to be permanent: The British decision “has no scientific basis”. It is more easily the result of “the fear of the lack of scientific answers”.
Not that the public health specialist makes sense of the view that the UK has something against Portugal. “It seems to me an excess of domestic perspective” to look at the decision like that. “Travels to our country were not prohibited”, only a quarantine was imposed on those who return, which “seems and is excessive”, but should be seen as a measure of “caution”, he considers.
“The UK is a revolving door to the world. For the tourists that leave and for the amount of people that enter. I believe that the example of Seychelles and Chile, where cases started to grow again despite the large swaths of the population being vaccinated,” scared the political power, says Tiago Correia. “Returning to confinement is a political burden that the country does not want to risk”, he concludes.
Responding to the few known cases, Óscar Felgueiras, a mathematician at the University of Porto, speaks of a “false pretext”. “It is perfectly clear that this is not the main reason. I believe that the end of the green corridor makes sense, but the justification will be for the fact that Portugal has a higher incidence than that of several European countries”. “In the UK the number of infected people is on the rise and they want to play it safe,” he told Expresso.
For the immunologist Luís Delgado, it is “a decision taken by the wrong people”. The professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto defends the “common sense” of having a “global international network to carry out the epidemiological ‘follow up’ of the variants”, as there is great “the risk of some jeopardizing the coverage given by the vaccines”, but it doesn’t make sense “to be a secretary of state or a mayor” to decide later, “without scientific basis”: “If there is one thing this pandemic has taught us, it is that decisions cannot be made in the light of the political interests of the moment, in an open-close/close-open”, which is not understood.
DGS admits community transmission of the Indian variant in Portugal
If this pace of increase in cases is maintained, the country could reach 120 per 100,000 population within 30 days, half for Lisbon and Vale do Tejo. DGS admits that there may be community transmission of the Indian variant of Covid-19 in Portugal.
In a statement sent this Friday to the newsrooms, it is stated that “as of June 2, 74 cases of the B.1.617.2 lineage (associated with India) have been identified.”
The existence of this variant in the country, namely what it called a “Nepalese mutation”, was invoked by the British Government to justify removing Portugal from the green list of countries to travel on Thursday. The decision, which will have negative effects for tourism in Portugal, takes effect on Tuesday.
The report, produced by DGS and INSA, also reads that “the genomic sequencing revealed several different introductions of this variant in Portugal. The absence of an epidemiological link in some of the more recent cases may indicate the existence of community transmission of the same.”
The overwhelming majority of cases in Portugal are still of the English variant (87.7%) and there are still just over a hundred cases of the South African variant, as well as about 140 cases of the Manaus variant in Brazil.
INSA REPORT will be published on our website this morning
Covid-19 Update
The DGS Covid-19 situation report was published yesterday with the following data:
Confirmed Cases: 851,461 (+ 430 / + 0.05 %)
Number of admitted: 267 (+ 13 / + 5.12 %)
Number of ICU admitted: 53 (+ 1 / + 1.92 %)
Deaths: 17,029 (+ 0 / + 0.00 %)
Recovered: 810,959 (+ 300 / + 0.04 %)
Active cases: 22,473 (+130 /+0.58%)
Safe Communities comparisons/trends: show that deaths were zero; there was a large reduction in new cases compared to yesterday and below last weeks’ daily average (491) However this was still higher than recoveries and again around half new cases in Lisbon and Tejo Valley, similar to yesterday.
There were more in hospital after three days of decreases. Covid-19 Patients reduced by 6581 compared to number in hospital 1st February 2021. In ICU there was a small increase but one of the lowest total figures since September 2020. Active cases however again rose and were the highest total since 3rd May 2021. Over 1300 additional active cases since Tuesday last week.
Health
Covid-19 Vaccinations Self-scheduling for those 45 years and over now available
The self-scheduling system for the vaccine against covid-19 is now available for people over 45 years of age, said today to Lusa, a source from the ‘task force’ responsible for the vaccination plan. According to the same source, given the “good pace” at which the process has been taking place, “whoever proposes to self-schedule will have a vacancy as of June 14”. The availability of this tool for people over 45 years old follows the calendar established by the ‘task force’.
The process is the same as previously for other age groups
The link is here:
More than 20 municipalities with incidence rate over 120 per 100,000
Portugal currently has 20 municipalities with an incidence of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus above 120 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days, two more in relation to those recorded on Friday.
According to data released today in the epidemiological bulletin of the Directorate-General for Health, as in the previous bulletin, there are no municipalities at very high risk, that is, with an incidence in 14 days exceeding 960 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The municipality of Ribeira Grande (546) remains at high risk of contagion, which has an accumulated incidence of over 480 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and is the only one in this group.
Of the 20 municipalities, four record an accumulation, in the last 14 days, of more than 240 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, two less than in the previous report: Golegã (318), Nordeste (288), Odemira (449) and Vila Franca of the Field (299). The remaining 15 municipalities have values between 120 and 239.9 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants.
With zero cases in the last 14 days, 67 municipalities are referred, six more in relation to the previous bulletin. The 14-day cumulative incidence of today’s bulletin refers to the days between May 19th and June 1st.
Covid-19: PSD requires urgent hearing of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Assembly of the Republic on removal of country from UK ‘green list’
Lisbon, 04 Jun 2021 (Lusa) – The PSD parliamentary group today requested an urgent hearing to the Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding the removal of Portugal from the so-called ‘green list’ of travel in the United Kingdom, resulting from the pandemic.
According to the request delivered today in the Assembly of the Republic and disclosed to journalists, the Social Democrats requested “an urgent hearing” to the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, 
Augusto Santos Silva, “in the sense to explain the efforts he has made up to the moment of the decision and what initiatives he will develop so that Portugal’s image is not harmed”.
The PSD parliamentary bench considered that the removal of Portugal from the British ‘green list’ of destinations considered safe for citizens for citizens, following the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, is “a setback that jeopardizes the recovery of vital sectors for the country’s economy, such as tourism, hotels and restaurants”.
The decision, announced on Thursday and which enters into force at 04:00 on June 8, requires citizens returning from Portugal to fulfil a ten-day quarantine on return. This measure will also be “harmful” for the Portuguese community residing in the United Kingdom, which will be “who will suffer most from these restrictions, the party added.
The British Government justified Portugal’s descent to the ‘amber list’ with “the positivity rate” that “almost doubled since the last review in Portugal” and with “a sort of Nepal mutation”, of the variant detected in Indian Territory explained Transport Minister Grant Shapps.
Other news
Union of SEF inspectors displeased with meeting with MAI
Lisbon, 04 Jun 2021 (Lusa) – The SEF Investigation and Supervision Career Union left today’s meeting with the Minister of Internal Affairs unsatisfied and is preparing to debate ways to fight against the restructuring of the service without the approval of the parliament.
“The minister presented a process of restructuring the Foreign and Border Services which we consider to be incipient and messy, insisting that the changes must be approved by the Government through a diploma, something we disagreed out of hand and against which we are going to fight,” he told Lusa the president of the union, Acácio Pereira.
According to the union leader, little or nothing useful came out of the meeting with Eduardo Cabrita, right away, because, said the union leader, the government official said that the SEF is a State organization and that it can be restructured without the approval of the Assembly of the Republic. A position directly against that of the unions, he said.
Acácio Pereira added that the union has a congress scheduled for Sunday and that the issue of restructuring and possible ways of fighting it will be discussed by the members.
“We will fight for what we understand to be the legal and adequate principles for the restructuring of the service”, he underlined.
After this meeting, another one will take place between the minister and the Union of Inspectors of Investigation, Inspection and Borders (SIIFF), which, like the first, has as its only agenda item “the statute of inspectors in the investigation and inspection career, in the framework of restructuring of the SEF”.
The Council of Ministers resolution that defines the political guidelines for the restructuring of this service was published in Diário da República on April 14th.