Almost one in three people aged 65 and over in Portugal have already been vaccinated against influenza this year – “more than double the figure for the same period in 2023”, according to a monitoring report on the vaccination campaign released today.
Having said that, the uptake varies wildly across regions: the first ‘vaccinometer’ – an initiative of the Portuguese Society of Pneumology and the Portuguese Association of General and Family Medicine (APMGF) – shows that in Madeira 56% of people aged 65 and over have been vaccinated, in the Alentejo 46.7%, in the North 38.7%, in the Centre 28.6% in the Lisbon metropolitan area 27.4%; in the Algarve, 18.9% and in the Azores just 7.1%.
Lusa’s report today adds that “with regard to the joint administration of the flu and Covid-19 vaccines, almost 83% of the groups with a recommendation chose to receive them together, the main reason (68.6% of those who did) being the desire to be protected against both diseases”.
Drilling down, this shows that less than a third of the country’s ‘vulnerable’ age groups have been persuaded to roll up their sleeves for annual vaccinations this year, and in the Algarve, three-quarters of those targeted have not yet come forwards.
