“We aim to vaccinate 100,000 people every day and if more vaccines come this number will rise and we can reach 150,000 vaccines per day, which is a gigantic logistical operation ,” said the official in remarks to journalists.

The official said that as of 28 March, 80 percent of people over 80 years old had been vaccinated with a first dose against Covid-19.

If in this first quarter, Portugal received two million vaccines, the forecast for the second quarter is nine million vaccines, of which 1.8 million are to be administered in April and the remainder in the following two months.

“We are going to skip a weekend [Easter] to get organised and spend the next weekend working on vaccinating 40,000 to 100,000 per day”, he explained, which requires an organised plan with sufficient professionals and defined vaccination sites to enable “quick vaccinations so as not to accumulate vaccines”.

The official admitted that there have been “difficulties in the process” related to elderly or isolated people who, “even if they have mobile phones they do not necessarily answer or respond to messages”.

But, with the help of the local authorities, these difficulties “have been overcome”, he said.