Covid-19 was initially underestimated and the first news about an unknown coronavirus, which, two years later, in the world has already killed six million people and in Portugal almost 21 thousand, was devalued.
First there were doubts about the possibility of the disease, first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan, even reaching Europe. But, at the end of February 2020, the director-general of Health, Graça Freitas, admitted a future with one million infected people, generating such apprehension that she ended up calling a press conference to “completely” rule out this hypothesis.
But a year and a half later, Portugal reached the mark of one million infected. And when the numbers indicated that the pandemic was slowing, the two million mark was reached in a third of the time, in just five months. And already this year, in 22 days, it reached three million.
The story of SARS-CoV-2 began on the last day of 2019, after reports by the authorities in Wuhan about the detection of 27 cases of viral pneumonia, which months later spread to all corners of the world.
The first two cases in Portugal emerged on March 2, 2020 and since then there have been five successive waves – resulting in more than three million infections – of what became the Covid-19 pandemic, when the initial news from Wuhan only reported that the patients, seven in serious condition, had fever and difficulty breathing and that all cases were related to a live animal market, with no sign of human contagion.
The information was not considered relevant in Europe and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was monitoring the situation, but was lifting restrictions on travel or trade.
In early January, Graça Freitas said, based on the WHO and when it was taken for granted that it was not a flu virus or a coronavirus, that viral pneumonia was limited to Wuhan and that it was not transmitted from person to person. , and any “special recommendation” is unnecessary.
But shortly thereafter, on January 9, China announced that it had identified the disease as being caused by a new type of coronavirus, which passes from animals to humans, and which causes respiratory infections that could be transmitted through coughing, sneezing or sneezing. physical contact.
Possible cases of the disease had already been identified in South Korea and on January 11, the first patient died in Wuhan. But the authorities said that everything was “under control”.
The same optimism came from the WHO, which on January 13 said that the disease had not spread beyond the Wuhan market, which was closed, and that there were no other cases in the rest of China or outside the country.
Although the very next day the WHO said that all hospitals in the world were being prepared for a new virus, the organization did not issue warnings about visits to Wuhan. In Portugal, the DGS recommended extra care for anyone traveling to China, and Graça Freitas insisted that the outbreak was contained and that the possibility of the virus reaching the country was small.
In the same vein, the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC, in the original acronym) stressed that there was no “clear and sustained indication” that the new coronavirus was transmitted between people.
In the middle of the month, Japan and South Korea registered cases of the infection, several Asian countries adopted measures and China confirmed that the disease was transmissible between humans.
Despite the ECDC rating the disease's likelihood of reaching Europe as moderate and despite the WHO not declaring an international emergency, Chinese authorities cordoned off Wuhan and other cities, canceled events, closed venues and built hospitals.
Graça Freitas said on 24 January that the Portuguese should be alert but calm and that the country had contingency plans that ensured the necessary preparation to detect, diagnose and treat possible cases. On that day, the first three cases in Europe were registered in France. Germany and Italy followed.
At the end of January 2020, China was already talking about a “serious situation”, and the Portuguese Minister of Health, Marta Temido, guaranteed that hospitals were prepared for a situation treated in a “quiet, but rigorous” way.
On 30 January, the WHO declared the situation an international public health emergency, but continued to oppose restrictions on travel, trade and limitations on the movement of people.
All over the world there was this optimism in February 2020, visible, for example, when Japan “bluntly” denied any intention of canceling the Olympic Games, scheduled for July. But in Italy cases proliferated and at the end of the month there were 29 deaths. In China there were almost three thousand.
New cases were appearing in several European countries, although the ECDC insisted that the situation was under control, and that the WHO did not declare a pandemic until March 11.
At the time, neither the ECDC nor the national authorities recommended closing borders, or schools, which would soon be closed.
After two years, the pandemic came to cause more than 60 infections a day in Portugal and killed almost 21 people, despite almost nine million having benefited from the vaccines developed in the meantime, which was reflected in a significant reduction in serious cases.
A year ago, on 22 February, Vice Admiral Gouveia e Melo, then coordinator of the taskforce of vaccination, said that herd immunity could be achieved in August and on 21 March, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, said that Europe could achieve herd immunity on 14 July, two new examples of optimism not confirmed.
In August 2021 Portugal did not reach immunity but the mark of one million infected. And the Ómicron variant was still missing and there were still two million infected people missing.
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