“This week is a very critical situation because it is the end of the holidays and the end of the tolerance period. On the one hand, we will have our professionals who were on holiday returning, but on the other hand, we also have many more patients, particularly in some regions of the country, coming into our emergency rooms,” Ana Paula Martins explained to journalists.

Speaking on the sidelines of a visit to the Figueira da Foz District Hospital, headquarters of the Baixo Mondego Local Health Unit (ULSBM), the minister does not expect waiting times in emergency rooms “to improve significantly” during this week, specifically at the Amadora-Sintra and Beatriz Ângelo (Loures) hospitals and, in Lisbon, “Santa Maria itself, which is also experiencing many difficulties”.

Ana Paula Martins stressed that Portugal is “still in the midst of a flu epidemic”, in a winter that is harsher than last year's and with more aggressive viruses in circulation, although there is still no concrete data on whether the peak of the disease has already been reached this year.

“Our virologists say that we may indeed be reaching the peak, but we will only know in a few days' time if we start to see the number of infections, through the Sentinela network, falling,” explained the minister.

Still on the subject of the “criticality of waiting times” in emergency services, Ana Paula Martins stated that this particularly affects patients with yellow wristbands (those considered urgent), whom she defined as “very frail, chronically ill, older, very frail, indeed”.

The minister noted, on the other hand, that in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo there is a population “very much lacking in family doctors”, although she highlighted the role of primary health care in preventing more people from going to emergency services.

“Primary healthcare during this seasonal [flu] season has been very active and has managed to respond very well, even in areas where there is a severe shortage of family doctors, with several consultations, hundreds, thousands of consultations across the country,” she argued.

The Health Minister also rejected the idea that hospitals' contingency plans for situations such as a flu epidemic are only on paper.