Vaccine coordinator says Portugal means to vaccinate between 95,000 – 100,000 per day

With only 8.6 million of the 11.3 million doses initially anticipated for Portugal during the period between April and June actually expected to arrive, vaccine coordinator Henrique Gouveia e Mel insists he is still aiming to vaccinate between 95,000 and 100,000 people per day. This week another 277,000 doses were administered (of which 63,000 were the AstraZeneca jabs temporarily suspended last week). This means, he told the meeting today of experts evaluating Portugal’s epidemiological situation, that by the end of the week, a million Portuguese will have had their first doses, and half a million will have had both doses. Within the next week, Gouveia e Mel hopes to have 90% of all care home residents and staff vaccinated. The only reason not to have moved more quickly in this regard has been due to ‘outbreaks of Covid-19’ in certain care homes, which means vaccination has to be delayed.