The data in the opinion of Miguel Guimarães, Chairman of the Medical Association (OM), reflect the effect of vaccinations.

Specifically, at that date, 68.1 percent of patients with Covid-19 in the ICU were under 59 years of age, 26.4 percent of whom aged between 50 and 59 years, 23.9 percent aged between 40 and 49 years old and only 12.3 percent between 30 and 39 years old. Patients aged between 20 and 29 in these units are the minority (5.5 percent).

In the normal hospital wards, the number is around 50 percent. The elderly stand out, however, with 18.4 percent of patients aged over 80 years, but the Chairman of the Medical Association stresses that the most serious cases are less frequent and in intensive care represents only 1.8 percent of the hospitalised people.

"The effect of vaccination is now seen", highlighted the president of the Medical Association, considering that the fact that 67 percent of the population has already received at least the first dose of the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is one of the main factors for the decrease of deaths and hospitalizations.

Virologist Pedro Simas, from the Molecular Institute of the University of Lisbon, agrees with this relationship, but considers it important to be careful when reading these numbers.

"Right now, it's all on a much smaller scale," the specialist explained that because there is a higher percentage of younger patients, it does not mean that the number, in absolute terms, is higher compared to other periods when the new daily cases of infection were similar.