Portugal’s Covid lethality rate has “fallen drastically” to 0.5%, translating to one death in every 200 positive cases.
This is the ‘good news’ of the day, and follows President Marcelo’s call for the way the pandemic is being managed to start changing (click here).
Says TSF radio this morning, “levels of the month of May haven’t been this low since the start of the pandemic.
“Mortality has fallen drastically to 0.5% as have hospital admissions which are now responsible for 1% of positive cases, dropping to 0.24% for those ending up in intensive care”.
These are the numbers that will be being discussed at tomorrow’s meeting of experts at medicines authority Infarmed, says the radio channel, suggesting it is a given that ‘red lines’ will be increased, so that municipalities like Lisbon which have been fearing new restrictions due to rising case numbers may well be spared any kind of restrictions at all.
TSF compares May’s situation with that of the end of December when 3.9% of active cases ended up in hospital and 0.7% in intensive care.
When it comes to mortality, the fall is just as marked.
In 2020, 1.7% of Portuguese who contracted Covid-19 ended up dying. This percentage increased to 1.8% in January this year, and to 4.6% in February. Since then, however, it has been ‘all downhill’, reaching 0.5% this month, equivalent to one fatality in every 200 positive cases.
Milton Severo, an investigator at ISPUP, the public health institute of the University of Porto, explains the principal reason for the improvement has been vaccination of the eldery population – and the robustness of younger generations who may become infected, but do not end up needing treatment in hospitals.
