Portugal has lower Covid-19 death rate than most of Europe

Portugal has a mortality rate of around 5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants due to Covid-19, the Secretary of State for Health said on Wednesday, stressing that this figure is lower than in most European countries.

In the daily press conference monitoring the pandemic, António Lacerda Sales said that this indicator is lower in Germany and Austria and considered that Portugal should ” take the plateau of the epidemic’s progress seriously”.

“We don’t compare ourselves with other countries, this is a global fight, it’s not a dispute of numbers or countries”, he said, considering that the state of Covid-19 in Portugal “is a consequence of the excellent civic behaviour that the Portuguese people have given”.

Diogo Cruz, Deputy Director General of Health (DGS), reaffirmed that the accounting of Covid-19 deaths in Portugal could mean “a higher number of deaths compared to other countries” that account for them differently.

“We are currently considering and classifying mortality by covid, for the purposes of this particular outbreak, all people who die from covid, regardless of the basic cause” of death established by the international mortality classification.

The head of the Directorate General of Health stated that Portugal has ” the widest possible classification in relation to other European countries”.

“What we have seen so far is the flattening of the curve and that the measures taken have been adequate, at least for what we have proposed”, he said, without making any forecast of when the measures to restrict population movements could be alleviated.

Diogo Cruz said that the DGS has been “studying with a very large group of academics and others about what measures and when they could be alleviated”.

“This is work that has been done for over a week, which we will continue to do and we will say when we have conclusions,” he assured.

António Lacerda Sales also did not comment on scenarios for the alleviation of the most restrictive measures: “Today a reassessment of the state of emergency is being made and it will be up to the President of the Republic to make decisions afterwards”.

Portugal registers 599 deaths associated with Covid-19 in 18,091 confirmed cases of infection, according to the daily bulletin of the DGS on the pandemic.

In relation to the previous day, there are 32 more deaths (+5.6%) and 643 more cases of infection (+3.7%).

Of those infected, 1,200 are hospitalized, 208 of them in intensive care units, and 383 have been cured.

Portugal has been in a state of emergency since March 19, which should be renewed this week for a further 15 days.