Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations, deaths should drop in coming weeks

  • Lusa
  • 3 February 2022

The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) believes that Portugal is reaching the peak of the current wave of the pandemic.

Portugal is reaching the peak of the current wave of the pandemic and, in the coming weeks, will see a reduction in infections, hospitalisations and deaths from covid-19, estimates the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST).

“The Rt (transmissibility rate of the virus) throughout the country is in sharp decline and is already approaching 1 in geometric average to seven days, which indicates that the peak incidence is already being reached,” advances the report of the working group of monitoring the pandemic of the IST that Lusa had access.

According to the document prepared by Henrique Oliveira, Pedro Amaral, José Rui Figueira and Ana Serro, who make up the working group coordinated by the president of IST, Rogério Colaço, the rate of change of cases at a national level is close to 0%, which also indicates that Portugal is going through the peak of the incidence.

According to the specialists, the peak incidence reached a real value of 130,000 to 150,000 infections, of which “less than 60,000 cases were visible (on average at seven days) due to test saturation”, says the IST study from the University of Lisbon.

“In February the trend will be a gradual decrease in incidence, which will then become very sharp,” estimates the IST, which also predicts that in the coming days there will still be a slight increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths “by inertia”, but should begin to reduce from the end of next week.

The working group maintains the forecast that Portugal will no longer exceed 2,500 patients on Covid-19 wards and 200 in intensive care units, while mortality “will be slightly higher than expected by the dragging of the peak incidence to the beginning of this month”.

The group “fully confirms” the previous forecast that, due to the number of people vaccinated and those who have been infected, “after the end of February the entire population will have some immunity to the virus”.

The experts also consider that since the last report of January 25, “there has been a decrease in pandemic risk”, with the evaluation indicator of the pandemic lower on Wednesday to 91.78, below the critical threshold of 100 points.

According to these two institutions, when this indicator, which combines incidence, transmissibility, mortality and hospitalisation in intensive care units, exceeds 100 points, the health response to people with other diseases begins to be compromised.

“The probability of returning to 100 points (alarm level) in February is only 40%, with a downward trend. The probability of the indicator exceeding 120 (critical level) has dropped from 40% to levels close to 0,” the document adds.