“No chaos”: health minister insists hospitals are coping well

Portugal’s health minister, Manuel Pizarro, has rejected the idea that there is chaos in hospital emergency departments – assuring that services are managing to respond to all patients. “The information I have is that all patients were adequately treated, adequately referred. So that’s not exactly the description of chaos,” he said, following Monday’s news about a deluge of demand on Lisbon’s Santa Maria hospital. The news comes in a week that government leaders will be meeting with health specialists at Infarmed, already voicing concerns that the country has “lost the perception of risk” with regard to Covid-19.