Portugal is the only country among more than 20 in Europe with a “very high excess” of mortality. DGS warns of the trend and offers advice to the population.
Since the last weeks of 2023, in particular week 51 of last year, Portugal has been registering a much higher excess mortality rate than usual.
The latest analyses and balance sheets from the Ricardo Jorge National Health Institute (INSA) and the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), relating to the last week of last year, confirm this and reveal that the trend is likely to continue in the coming days.
According to data from the European website EuroMOMO, which monitors mortality, quoted by Diário de Notícias, Portugal is, at the beginning of 2023, the only country out of more than 20 in Europe with a classification of “very high excess” mortality.
Among the other countries considered (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Malta and Ukraine), behind Portugal are Greece, with “moderate excess” mortality and the English region of Scotland, as well as England (the latter with “moderate excess”).
On the other hand, in northern Europe, only Denmark has a “low excess” mortality rate, with all the other countries registering a figure close to the usual.
Milton Severo, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Public Health (ISP) at the University of Porto, told the same newspaper that there may be changes in the classification of some European countries, as there may be some delay in updating and communicating excess mortality data.
According to the Ministry of Health, in the last seven days there have been 797 more deaths than expected. Last Friday the figure was 751.
The expert continues, pointing out that the crime wave and the number of emergency episodes are “within expectations”, “the big difference is the average waiting time for patient triage, which has increased a lot”, from an average of 30 minutes to more than two hours in the last week.
“We may have been the first country to develop a flu epidemic, but we are clearly above the rest of the European countries,” says Milton Severo, considering Portugal’s excess mortality to be “worrying”.
Regarding the last week of 2023, the DGS, in the published report, confirms that “since week 51 of 2023, there has been an excess of mortality from all causes, in age groups aged 45 and over. Mortality from COVID-19 showed an upward trend, below the ECDC threshold.”
The flu continues to put pressure on the emergency services and the DGS warns that the virus is circulating rapidly and that, in view of the cold wave over the next few days, the health authorities admit that mortality could continue to rise until the end of the month.
The DGS admits that vaccination against the flu vaccine is below the figures for the previous campaign, but is close to the “best case scenario” drawn up for the autumn-winter 2023/2024 season, with 2.5 million people vaccinated.
Analysis of the epidemiological situation in Portugal “supports the maintenance of vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza” which, according to the DGS, “remains a fundamental tool for protecting the population”.
The DGS recalls that “the activity of respiratory viruses supports the communication of the adoption of individual protection measures against respiratory infections by the population. According to DGS Standard 013/2022, it is also recommended that all people with acute respiratory symptoms wear a mask whenever they are in contact with other people or in shared spaces” and recommends that the population adopt individual protection measures against the cold.