COVID-19 | Weekly Update

Friday, September 10th | COVID-19 Daily Update

Data advanced today by the DGS indicate that, in the last 24 hours, 1,323 new cases of infection and seven deaths associated with COVID-19 were registered in Portugal. According to the epidemiological bulletin, there are currently 1,053,450 confirmed cases and 17,843 deaths since the pandemic’s beginning. As for the recovered patients, 1,936 more were counted, making the total number grow to 996,987.

THE PANDEMIC IN PORTUGAL

The Government will decide the new phase of deconfinement “within three weeks”, after 85% of the population has been vaccinated against COVID-19 and after having heard experts. According to the Minister of State and Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, only then “the Government will be in a position to make the decisions”.

For now, the Executive has released the guidelines to Higher Education institutions to ensure “safe conditions” for on-site activities in the next school year and stipulate the mandatory use of a protective mask against COVID-19.

In the same sense, the DGS published a standard on the operation conditions of daycare centres in the current context of deconfinement, which provides for a screening of all employees, regardless of whether they are vaccinated.

The Portuguese are the Europeans who most consider that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks (87%) and who most defend the “civic duty” of vaccination against COVID-19 (86%), reveals the Eurobarometer survey commissioned by the European Parliament. This is the highest of the 27 Member States and 15 points above the European Union average (72%).

It should also be noted that Portugal today sent Guinea-Bissau a new batch of 76,000 vaccines, accompanied by material for administering the medication from AstraZeneca.

THE PANDEMIC IN EUROPE AND THE WORLD

The European director of WHO believes that the “essential objective of vaccination will be, above all, to prevent severe forms of the disease and mortality”. Hans Kluge was pessimistic about the ability of vaccination against COVID-19, no matter how high, to stop the pandemic on its own. It is necessary to “anticipate to adapt vaccination strategies”, he defended.

The European Medicines Agency, on the other hand, considers that the decisions of the countries of the European Union to move towards boosting doses of vaccines, namely to vulnerable groups, are “well understood”. Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency is studying vaccination for children under 12 years of age.

In turn, Spain went from “high risk” to “medium risk” of virus transmission, having reduced to less than 150 cases of accumulated incidence diagnosed in the last 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants.

At the same time, the British Government initiated a consultation on making the vaccination of health professionals mandatory. The Ministry of Health will assess whether vaccines against COVID-19 and influenza should be mandatory for health and medical care professionals to perform functions in contact with patients.

Across the Atlantic, it should be noted that nearly 80 million Americans have not yet been vaccinated, something that is considered “unacceptable” by the US President, while presenting a mandatory vaccination plan to “combat those who block public health “.

More than 900 pages related to data indicate that the coronavirus was developed through US-funded investigations in China. The documents provide details on US-funded investigations into various types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, including the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, which used state money to fund coronavirus investigation in bats in the laboratory. Chinese.

MEDICAL PROGRESS

Moderna is developing a vaccine that combines a booster dose of COVID-19 with an experimental flu vaccine and is expected to begin clinical trials in six to 12 months.

However, a UK study concludes that vitamin D3 and some drugs to treat allergies, pneumonia, cancer, malaria, tuberculosis, and hypertension reduce replication of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in human cells. The study was published in the scientific journal “PLOS Pathogens” and carried out by a team of scientists at the University of Manchester, who used human cell cultures infected with SARS-CoV-2.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

The finance minister called for a “focus” on the European Union and Portugal to ensure “a complete recovery” after the COVID-19 crisis, highlighting “stronger-than-expected economic growth” this year, at 5%. According to João Leão, this means that “we now need to focus this year and the next to ensure a strong and full recovery from the crisis and we need to focus on implementing the European Union’s Next Generation [recovery fund] across Europe to the guarantee”.

Yesterday, the Council of Ministers approved the proposal to exempt stamp duty on debt restructuring operations hitherto under moratorium, at a time when the mechanism for the suspension of credit payments created to protect bank customers during the pandemic is approaching its end.

However, the Portuguese State’s annoyance is increasingly evident with the drop of seven places in the great ranking of innovation in the European Union. According to INE data, Portugal sank from 12th to 19th in the EU ranking, collapsing from the best position ever to the worst in more than a decade.

INE also announced today that the year-on-year inflation rate for August stood at 1.5%. This figure is identical to the previous month, according to data from the statistical office. The energy was the indicator that most contributed to the increase in prices, with a year-on-year growth of 9.3%, compared to 8.7% in July.

Iberinform, on the other hand, pointed to 3,290 insolvencies in the first eight months of this year, 335 more than in the same period last year. Also, the incorporation of companies in August decreased by 13.6% compared to the same period in 2020, with a total of 2,546 new companies created last August, 400 less than last year.

Outside, the UK reported that GDP grew 0.1% in July compared to June but is 2.1% below February 2020. This is the sixth consecutive month of GDP growth, although analysts had forecast higher growth of 0.5% in July.

FINANCIAL MARKETS

The Portuguese stock exchange interrupted a series of four sessions in decline and was trading, this morning, in positive territory, in line with the main European markets. The PSI-20 rose 0.04% to 5,341.23 points. On the main European stock exchanges, the German DAX gained 0.10%, the British FTSE 100 added 0.32%, the French CAC 40 advanced 0.39%, and the Euro Stoxx 50 gained 0.40%. The Spanish IBEX 35 lost 0.10%. Investor fears linked to a slowdown in economic recovery begin to ease after the ECB revised its growth projections for the Eurozone economy upwards to 5% in 2021, expecting the inflation rate to reach 2.2% before start to fall over the next two years.