The seemingly eternal swings and roundabouts of Covid-19 in Portugal continues today, taking the country towards Christmas with a relatively high number of new infections, but the ‘good news’ that hospital admissions are maintaining a downward trend.
As Lagos retired doctor and regular virus social media commentator Lourdes Cerol Bandeira remarked some days ago, even if the ‘new variant’ makes it here, everything points to it precipitating a ‘milder form of Covid-19’ (click here).
The theory would explain the country’s ‘sudden leap’ over the last couple of days of new cases from the high-2000s, to the mid-4000s.
Today’s figure of 4,378 saw the global active number of cases increase, but only marginally as the number of cases deemed ‘recovered’ (whether those ‘suffering’ from infection ever showed symptoms) reached 4,807.
For the full picture (click here). There are currently 2,853 people in hospital (less 137 than yesterday’s tally) of which 505 are in intensive care.
The last 24-hours has registered 70 deaths with Covid-19 (ie the virus was not necessarily the cause of death, victims simply registered positive for it at time of death).
Meantime, the country is enjoying the Christmas ‘window’ from restrictions declared by the government earlier this month.
From last night onwards, people have been able to travel freely round the country, even those in boroughs under habitual virus-led ‘lockdowns’ (of which there are currently 109).
For the next two days, the 11pm curfew is extended to 2am, returning to 11pm on Boxing Day (December 26).
From that moment, all the boroughs under the ‘lockdowns’ that require them ‘at home’ after 1pm at weekends return to their various restrictions, along with restaurants and commerce equally limited.
New Year as we have written before has been ‘cancelled’ (click here).
