The President of the Republic reinforced today that the pandemic situation in Portugal is very different from the scenario of a year ago, despite the country having surpassed the previous maximum numbers of contagions for four days.
“There is an important difference between this year and the year before, which people have already noticed. There is a multiplication of contagions, the [Omicron] variant is very contagious, there is a multiplication because there is a degree of openness [of society], with football, with shows, people work and circulate, and this is naturally different from a situation of confinement,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, on the sidelines of a visit to the Parish Social Center of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Costa de Caparica, in the municipality of Almada, district of Setúbal.
Armed with a paper with the number of infections, hospitalizations, hospitalizations in intensive care and deaths from the last day of 2020 and the first days of 2021, the head of state explained the differences between the situation in the country and the one in which it finds itself. .
The increase in SARS-CoV-2 infections now, he said, "is not matched by the number of inpatients, which is a third of a year ago, and the number of intensive care is a quarter", as well as the number of deaths, which at the beginning of 2021 “it was galloping”.
“What does this mean? That the situation is different, that we must, of course, take the precautions and common sense imposed by the circumstances, but that we gradually got used to living with this phenomenon», he maintained.
Therefore, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made an assessment of the moment the country is experiencing: «The pandemic is still there, but we have already passed to the endemic».
On the last day of the year, the President of the Republic took stock of another year that in Portugal and around the world was mostly dominated by the pandemic, with advances and setbacks.
As for wishes for the future and for the year that starts on Saturday, the head of state preferred to leave them for the usual New Year's message.
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