Covid-19: Delta variant expected to cause confinement before the end of the month

Portugal may cross the ‘red lines’ of the pandemic in two weeks’ time, forcing the Government to review the country’s deconfinement process, warn the General Directorate of Health and the Ricardo Jorge Institute.

The Lisbon and Vale do Tejo region is already the closest to the highest transmission risk zone. 

The Delta variant has been detected in India and is already prevalent in the UK, with latest official data released last Friday confirming that the Delta variant is 60% more transferable.

The number of inpatients in intensive care has also been rising, especially on the mainland, with hospitals in Lisbon expected to exhaust their response capacity in the coming weeks.

With the growing number of detected cases of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, this variant could become dominant in Portugal by the end of June.

Until last Wednesday, 92 cases had been identified. Health authorities contacted the infected, one by one, looking for chains of transmission, but in many instances they found no link to any known cases of Covid-19. That is, they were infected in the community.

A study published yesterday by the General Health Directorate of England (Public Health England, PHE) indicates that the estimate is higher than the previous one, mentioned by Health Minister Matt Hancock earlier this week, of being 40% more contagious compared to the Alpha variant itself more transmissible than the early variants of the new coronavirus.

According to the PHE, 42,323 cases of this Delta variant first identified in India were identified, up from 29,892 a week ago, representing more than 90% of the total infections in the country.

The rise in the Transmissibility Index (Rt) between 1.2 and 1.4 in England reflects the impact of the Delta variant in the country, which had been experiencing a decline in the number of cases since January.

In the last seven days, between June 5th and 11th, the daily average was nine deaths and 6,556 cases in UK, which corresponds to an increase of 10.9% in the number of deaths and 58.1% in the number of infections in relation to seven days earlier.

The President of the Republic rejects the hypothesis of setbacks in the lack of confinement at the national level and says that hospitals are still far from the same pressure as in January.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa explains that the country will have to get used to the appearance of new variants and that periodic vaccination may be a reality.

Original article available in Portuguese at http://postal.pt/