Despite the government insisting that it will keep with its current risk matrix – on which it bases many of its restrictions – specialists are not satisfied.
They say the two indicators that rule the current matrix (case numbers per 100,000 inhabitants and transmissibility) “have started to give a partial vision of the problem”.
They want deaths and hospitalisations to be taken into account – as these will start to show how much the vaccination roll-out has ‘changed’ the outcome of infection by SARS-CoV-2.
The new format for Portugal’s risk matrix was presented today by mathematician Henrique Oliveria, at the General Medical Council in Lisbon.
Henrique Oliveira added weight to increasing criticism that the current matrix is “too slow” and in need of “more dynamic” data.
The council’s president Miguel Guimarães said the new format has already been sent to the health ministry which has apparently had a team working on this problem for “more than a month”.
“The President of the Republic also knows about it”, he told reports. “The government will have to decide”.
Reading between the lines this looks like something of a ‘coup’: putting the government on the spot ahead of yet another Council of Ministers.
