"Assessing based on all indicators, the situation in the vast majority of EU countries is an issue of great concern, except in some countries, and Portugal is among those in which we consider the situation is stable", said the head of the ECDC Public Health Emergency unit, Piotr Kramarz in an interview with the Lusa News Agency.

Noting that this analysis is based on the covid-19 case notification rate for 19 to 14 days, the deputy head of the ECDC disease program noted that “this number is already 500 per 100 thousand inhabitants as an average for the Union European Union, which is very high”.

"And it has been increasing in the last six weeks, so there are more and more cases reported" at European level, he added.

According to Piotr Kramarz, with "the increasing rate of reported cases [...] it is to be expected that, within a few weeks, or perhaps even next week, an increase in mortality will also begin to be seen", this at a time when the number of hospitalizations and entries in intensive care “remains very high”.

Out of this context is Portugal, according to the expert: “After some very high increases in February, the cases reported in Portugal have been decreasing”.

In concrete terms, the UK origin variant of SARS-CoV-2 is already responsible for about three-quarters (about 75 percent) of covid-19 cases in the EU, stressed Piotr Kramarz, also speaking of “higher mortality and more severe disease”.

ECDC data reveal that the mutations identified in South Africa and Brazil are also spreading across the EU, but still “on a much smaller scale”.

"There are many variants of this virus - it is a mutant virus - but these three we have designated as worrying variants because they are more transmissible and more serious", contextualizes Piotr Kramarz.

“People are in general, wherever we look, with the so-called pandemic fatigue. People are tired of all the restrictive measures and there is less and less compliance and this probably also contributes to the situation that we see now”, said the official.