According to this risk assessment, on Sunday the country was at 102.14 points, above the 100 points defined as the critical level in this indicator composed of five parameters: new cases, deaths, hospitalised in wards and intensive care, transmissibility index (Rt) and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infections

When this assessment exceeds 100 points, the “National Health Service has to allocate more resources and begins to have to move patients who do not have Covid-19 to the background. There are many treatments that are starting to be postponed”, mathematician Henrique Oliveira, one of those responsible for preparing this indicator of the pandemic, told Lusa.

“The ideal would have been to have a contagion rate that would maintain the response of health services without mortgaging the care of other diseases, which is starting to not happen. The indicator is oscillating around 100”, advanced the expert in dynamic systems.

According to him, the “very large increase in admissions” on Sunday, the day on which 192 more people were admitted to the ward, for a total of 2,219, “becomes very evident in the indicator”.

Henrique Oliveira predicts that Portugal will reach the peak of the current pandemic wave in the period between the beginning of February and the 12th of the same month.

This is the second time that Portugal has exceeded the critical level in this assessment since the beginning of the pandemic, with the first taking place between the end of October 2020 and February 2021, when there was the greatest pressure on health services.

At this time, the number of patients admitted to Portuguese hospitals reached a maximum of 6,869, with more than 900 people in intensive care units and more than 300 deaths recorded in two days (28 and 31 January).

The indicator developed by the Instituto Superior Técnico and Ordem dos Médicos continues to take into account the activity of the pandemic from the incidence and transmissibility (Rt), but also encompasses the severity of the disease, determined according to the lethality and hospitalisations in wards and in intensive care.