Portugal: Over 5M coronavirus cases since start of pandemic – authorities

Portugal has exceeded five million cases of infection by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and registers a reduction in the average number of daily infections, which now stands at 14,714, INSA announced on Wednesday.

“It is estimated that until 17 June 2022 there have been 5,064,674 cases” of infection in the country, advances the weekly report of the National Institute of Health Doctor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) on the evolution of the pandemic.

Since the first Covid-19 diagnoses were confirmed on March 2, 2020, it took about 17 months for the country to pass the one million positive cases mark, which happened on August 14, 2021.

The rate of contagions has accelerated since then, taking about 10 months for Portugal to go from one million to more than five million cases notified to the health authority, partly due to the emergence of new strains and sub-strains of the coronavirus considered by experts as more transmissible.

This is the case of the BA.5 sub-strand of the Omicron variant, detected at the end of March, which quickly became dominant in Portugal, being responsible for 88% of the infections registered in the country, according to the latest INSA data.

The report also states that the average number of daily cases at five days has fallen from 17,204 to 14,714 nationally and is slightly lower on the mainland (13,669).

As for the transmissibility index (Rt) of the virus that causes covid-19, INSA said the average figure for the period between 13 and 17 June is 0.88 nationally and 0.87 on the mainland. Last Friday it was 0.93.

This indicator – which estimates the number of secondary cases of infection resulting from each person carrying the virus – is below the threshold of 1 in all regions except the Azores (1.02), which “indicates a growing trend” in the number of infections in the archipelago, says the report on the evolution of the pandemic.

According to the document, all regions have an incidence rate above 960 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days, with the highest rate in the Azores (3,153.6), followed by Madeira (3,074.6) and Lisbon and Tagus Valley (2,673.2).