Coronavirus in Portugal: Easter is cancelled but the peak may have already passed
English language coronavirus news in Portugal on April 8, 2020
If you haven’t been paying attention, these numbers are pretty scary. But today’s numbers are actually relatively good news. The Director-General of Health, Graça Freitas, says the infection curve has been stable for the past few days.
Latest figures from the Directorate-General of Health (DGS).
But she warns we can’t let our guard down, saying if we relax restrictions it could lead to a “second peak” or a “second plateau”. Portuguese health experts have been predicting the peak will be a plateau, rather than the sharp peak you would expect at the top of a mountain.
Easter is cancelled
At midnight on Thursday, the Easter ban on travelling outside your council area comes into effect. Diário de Notícias reports big lines heading out of Lisbon before the deadline, saying there will be 35,000 police on the roads to enforce “Easter at Home”. You can not leave your municipal area (Lisboa, Porto, Cascais, Oeiras, Peniche, Portimão etc) until Tuesday except for health reasons or in an emergency.
We may have already passed the peak, according to a maths whiz specialising in epidemiology
Gabriela Gomes, a reader in biomathematics at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, tells Público the containment measures are working, according to her modelling. She doesn’t agree with previous government predictions that the peak could be some time in May, but warns DGS may be referring to deaths, rather than the curve of cases that she is modelling.
Her model looks at three scenarios: no action, mitigation and suppression. This article from The Atlantic and this one from NPR go into more detail about mitigation vs suppression. The Portuguese mathematician says her mother country is in suppression mode.
That’s obviously great news for keeping cases and deaths lower but it also means it will take much longer to achieve the herd immunity that would allow things to go back to normal. This National Geographic article does a good job of explaining why the UK ditched its potentially disastrous initial plan to achieve herd immunity and this one from the Independent goes into more detail about the possible ebbs and flows in lockdown measures in that country. Dr Gomes, along with several other experts talking to Público, stresses that we still need to maintain the measures currently in place.
In brief
We all know how important tourism is to Portugal. The National Statistics Institute estimates just a 25% drop in tourism would take 2.9% off the Portuguese economy
Schools won’t open this month. They’ll review again in May
“The Latin exception”: Diário de Notícias highlights some of the foreign media coverage of Portugal’s relatively successful fight against the pandemic
On a lighter note
“George Clooney of the Azores”, better known as the regional health director Tiago Lopes, has a Facebook fan page with more than 30,000 members. Diário de Notícias reports that his “pullovers in every colour and pattern, greying hair and clarity of message have been captivating and even bringing some peace to the population.”
Picture: Diário de Notícias
Was this update useful? This newsletter is brand new and I’d love to hear your feedback. What would you like to see more or less of each day?
thanks for the update in english😊😊..really appreciate🙏..i was feeling quite lost and confused😫😓
Great to have the Portugese situation explained in clear English.
We should all get together for a beer when this is over.
Shame we can't do something for ANZAC day.