The Algarve Regional Health Administration (ARS) will not release, at least this Thursday, 2 April, the usual daily bulletin with cases of Covid-19 in the region, distributed from municipality to municipality.
In a clarification published on its website, ARS explains that «in view of the progressive increase in the number of cases, ARS Algarve and DGS are seeking a better articulation, in order to ensure the harmonization of national and regional data, in order to ensure the important and fundamental dissemination of information as correct and up-to-date as possible to the population».
ARS Algarve does not say whether this decision to stop publishing regional data, as it was happening since March 20th, is to continue or whether it happens only today.
It also does not clarify whether such decision comes from its initiative or is a requirement of the General Directorate of Health.
Until now, the Algarvian ARS was the only one in the whole country that published, on a daily basis and by municipality, regional data on the evolution of Covid-19. A practice of information transparency that has even been praised in other regions. In such a way that, just yesterday, the PSD of Beja had been made public ask for the same transparency by the Regional Health Administration of Alentejo.
The decision not to publish the regional bulletin may be due to a discrepancy between the data disclosed by the DGS, in its national epidemiological bulletin, by regions and, for a few days, also by municipality, and those contained in the ARS Algarve bulletin, regionally and by county.
For example, since March 27, that the ARS has accounted for a case recovered in Portimão, which has not been reported, to date, in the DGS bulletin.
Even the question of third death, which took place on Saturday, the 28th, in Lagoa, was only accounted for in today's bulletin, April 2nd, five days later.
Last Sunday, March 29, it was the case that a ARS have five more confirmed cases than the DGS realized on the same day.
Going from county to county, there are also differences. According to today's DGS bulletin, the Covid-19 cases in the Algarve were distributed as follows: Albufeira (34), Faro (32), Loulé (25), Portimão (21), Vila Real de Santo António (11), Silves (7), Olhão (5), Lagoa (3) and Tavira (3), with less than three cases are not reported by the DGS.
But if you take into account the data from yesterday, April 1st, of the ARS, the numbers were different: Faro (37), Albufeira (35), Loulé (24), Portimão (22), Vila Real de Santo António (9), Lagoa (4), Silves (4), Tavira (3), Olhão (2), Castro Marim (2) and São Brás de Alportel (1).
In other words: there are municipalities that lose cases, such as Albufeira, Portimão and even Faro.
For several days, the ARS was clarifying that cases reported to the region by the DGS were of people who, after all, no longer resided in the Algarve.
In addition, the data from the DGS itself, by municipality, also showed, on several days, errors: at least on two days there was, in the health authority's bulletin, a confusion between the names of the municipalities of Lagoa (where cases have already been registered confirmed) and Lagos (no confirmed cases), causing apprehension among the Lacobrigenses, such as the Sul Informação found in numerous contacts and messages from readers.
All these divergences between the data from the DGS, at the central level, and the ARS, at the regional level, led to the suspension of the bulletin on the Algarve situation.
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