“In the first months of this year we had very low mortality. We had a very mild winter and little intense flu activity. January and February were months with very few deaths compared to homologous periods in the last five years”, Graça Freitas began to say, to then ensure that now Portugal is within, again, “the values ??expected for the time”.

“And within the programmed curve for mortality (…). The small rise that occurred in April and what contributed to this number is due to covid deaths and deaths from all other causes. We have to see this in the continuum between the beginning of the year and the current date and seeing that the first months had very little mortality. Now we are again within the expected values ??for the time and within the programmed mortality curve”, said the Director-General of Health.

Portugal recorded between 1 March and 10 May 1,964 more deaths than in the same period of 2019 and 878 more compared to 2018, according to data released on 22 May by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

Preliminary data from INE, which refer to general mortality (all causes of death) in the country, explain that “the increase in relation to 2019 results mainly from the increase in deaths in people aged 75 and over (+ 1,893)”.

Urged to comment on these figures at the daily press conference on the state of play on the covid-19 pandemic in Portugal, Graça Freitas said that in the “non-covid” deaths there was no record of any “specific” situation.

“In April we had a small peak of mortality, especially in older people and this small peak includes covid cases and other non-covid situations, none in particular. At this moment, mortality - compared to homologous periods and with the confidence interval - is completely within the expected values ??and parameters”, stressed Graça Freitas.

Data from INE were also released on 22 May, showing that the number of confirmed cases of covid-19 in Portugal was 29.1 per 10,000 inhabitants on Wednesday, 20 May, an increase of 12 percent over 6 May.

When commenting on these data, Graça Freitas took the opportunity to make an analysis of the current epidemiological curve in Portugal, stating that “in the last few days” the number of new cases per day has been “stabilized” in the order of 200 and 300 and that, excluding the “situation very concrete” in Azambuja “with a big outbreak and two little ones”, the remaining new cases “are localized things”.

“And then there is a community broadcast in the rest of the country that has already been more intense. At the moment, the North has the number of cases stabilized and less than in the past. The Centre region has improved a lot. The regions of the Algarve and the Alentejo have practically presented no new cases. The majority of cases are currently concentrated in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region. This is the situation that we are following more carefully”, said Graça Freitas.

According to the director-general, in “territorially dispersed” cases the origin of the infection and transmission has been “familiar” and “within the home”.

"The pattern in Lisbon has some association with younger and healthier people, the severity has not been much greater than it was in the past", she concluded.

Also questioned about whether she is aware of a situation in Loures, in a meat processing factory that would continue to work after an employee tested positive for the new coronavirus, Graça Freitas said that “the situation is actually quiet”.

A worker in a factory in Loures is hospitalized in the intensive care of Hospital Beatriz Ângelo with infection by covid-19, the health delegate revealed on Thursday, 21 May, adding that colleagues remain at work because they are "low risk" contagion.