At the press conference for daily monitoring of the pandemic in Portugal, the minister indicated that "the boards of directors of the different hospitals have the autonomy to make direct contracts" and honoured "doctors, nurses, technicians and operational assistants" who fight the covid-19.

António Lacerda Sales pointed out that these professionals are among some of the 262 people who have already received psychological support through the SNS24 line, "the primary gateway to the SNS" and that the average waiting time for answering this line is today less than three minutes.

The clinical surveillance of almost 34 thousand people sick with covid-19 is done through the computer platform Trace COVID-19, where about 75 thousand users are registered and to which almost 72,900 doctors have access, he said.