‘Reorganisation of health services’ may have contributed to deaths
For the first time, a study undertaken in Portugal has admitted that “the implementation of non-pharmacological measures, as well as the reorganisation of health services may have contributed to the indirect increase in some cases of death during the pandemic”.
It is a fairly tortuous sentence that when unpacked suggests that lockdowns and the refusal of hospitals/ health centres to see anyone who was not suffering from Covid-19 almost certainly carried devastating downsides.
And it comes in a report released in the early hours by public health institute Dr Ricardo Jorge (also known as INSA), on an in-depth study ordered over two years ago on the ‘determinants of mortality’ that had hit an historic high.
According to Lusa today, the study concludes that “COVID-19 caused 19,119 more deaths in the first two years of the pandemic than were expected for the same period and the excess mortality mainly affected older people and the chronically ill”.
It estimates that between March 2020 and December 31, 2021 there were 21,243 excess deaths, 90% of which (19,119) were “attributable to covid-19”.
That sentence also needs unpacking: attributable does not mean the victims HAD Covid-19. It suggests their deaths were attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The level of excess deaths “reinforces the need to prioritise” the elderly and chronically ill “in preparing for and responding to future pandemics, both in terms of protection from infection and its complications, and in preventing and mitigating the side effects of non-pharmacological measures”, says the text.
Speaking to Lusa, researcher Ana Paula Rodrigues, returned to the “great risk” everyone had been under but particularly the elderly “because age is a risk factor for Covid-19 and can be fatal in the elderly” (as indeed can any respiratory infection…)
She specifically pointed to the need for the country to be able to “identify other measures within non-pharmacological ones, that specifically protect these age groups”.
Again, looking at that sentence, it suggests authorities realise in retrospect how the restrictive policies of the pandemic had not in fact protected the elderly.
Referring to the characteristics of the Portuguese population, Ana Paula Rodrigues said “we have to look at this whole social context and, in addition to specific protection measures, in the next pandemic, develop other social and health measures to protect them from other effects as well, not putting them at risk of aggravating other pathologies they already have”.
The study pointed to an excess of all-cause mortality in the over-65 age group, increasing with age, but stressed that the direct effect of Covid-19 decreased with age, admitting that the older population may have been “the one that most felt the secondary effects of social changes and the organisation of and access to health services during the pandemic’”
Again, this means the elderly may have been the age group worst affected by social changes and lack of (non-Covid) healthcare being provided during the two-year period.
“Researchers even point out that the changes in economic and social conditions resulting from the implementation of non-pharmacological measures, as well as the reorganisation of health services, ‘may have contributed to the indirect increase in some causes of death during the pandemic’, whether due to delays or avoidance of medical care, increased consumption of illicit substances and ideas of suicide, or even an increase in interpersonal violence”.
As in other countries, in Portugal the population with the highest level of economic deprivation was the one with the highest point estimate of excess mortality directly attributable to covid-19 (89 %), concludes Lusa.
When carefully dissected, this report is dynamite: it shows authorities (led as they were by response in other European/ Western countries) ‘got it wrong’, or certainly ‘did not get it right’ – and as a result thousands more people died than might have done with a different (more relaxed) approach. ND
Source material: LUSA
