Portugal Gets The Vaccine

PORTUGAL Gets The Vaccine, But The Government Asks For Caution Still as the pandemic is far from over

Portugal celebrated the arrival today (Saturday), of the first batch of Covid-19 vaccines, but state publication Lusa was quick to point out the reality that the Covid-19 pandemic is still a long way from being over, stating, “There won’t be any real relief in contagions, hospitalizations, or deaths, until at least half the population has received its shots, and the bottom line is that even though Portuguese and international health authorities talk about hope, and the light at the end of the tunnel, the facts recommend caution”.

The current law requiring facemasks to be worn in the street, when social-distancing is not possible, has already been extended another three months, with Miguel Castanho, the director of the Institute of Biochemistry at Lisbon University’s Faculty of Medicine stressing, “Probably we will only start noticing if the vaccine is having an effect on the large numbers of the pandemic by next winter. It would be imprudent if people stopped all safety measures in place from one day to the next”.

He continued, “The game plan is to get roughly half the population immunised, and from that moment, work towards so-called herd immunity, which severely restricts the capacity of the circular virus. It would be at this ‘critical point’ that the essential substantive alterations would start becoming clear in Portugal’s epidemical situation, with a consistent reduction in the number of contagions, hospitalizations, and deaths”.

Half the population of Portugal is roughly 5 million, yet Francisco Ramos, the vaccination programme coordinator, has said that it is highly unlikely that more than 950,000 can be vaccinated before April.

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