At the end of May, Portugal had an average of 130 notifications of positive cases of Covid-19 per day and in the last seven days the daily average was around 390, explained the professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, noting that at the beginning of May, the number of notifications was "very low", around ten cases.

Regarding the number of deaths, Manuel Carmo Gomes said that it is "approximately 12 per day", which also represents "a large increase compared to a month ago" when there were around three deaths per day.

“If we go back approximately two months, at that time we had a death every two days”, said the epidemiologist and member of the Technical Committee for Vaccination Against Covid-19.

According to Carmo Gomes, there was also "a large increase" in the number of deaths of patients admitted to public hospitals who tested positive, which does not mean that they were hospitalized for Covid-19.

He also highlighted the increase of almost 30% of hospitalised patients who tested positive over the last three months.

"Right now, the people who test positive for Covid and are hospitalised, a little more than half are over 60 years old and around 24% over 80 years old", he said, pointing out that, eventually, it is in this age group that the most deaths occur due to various diseases.

As reasons for this increase in cases, Carmo Gomes pointed to the evolution of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, with the emergence of new strains capable of evading antibodies.

He also recalled that vaccination coverage last autumn was “not brilliant”.

"People over 60 years of age had a vaccination coverage of approximately 66%, which means that the other 34% were not even vaccinated in the autumn, they have not had contact with the vaccine for over a year and a half", he noted.

Although a large part of the adult population has no protection against infection, and if they come into contact with the virus, through inhalation of viral particles that are suspended in the air, they will be infected, they are protected against "the disease strike".

According to the specialist, the vast majority "do not have a very serious illness, they recover and do not end up in the hospital".