Portugal’s minister of health, Marta Temido, has warned that the country’s entire health system, including the National Health Service (SNS), private and third sectors and all back office structures, is close to its limit as it struggles to cope with a surge in coronavirus cases.
“We are putting all the means that exist in the country to work, but there is a limit and we are very close to the limit,” she said as she left a meeting at Garcia de Orta Hospital in Almada, on the south bank of the Tagus, across from Lisbon, on Sunday. “And the Portuguese need to know that.”
Addressing journalists outside the hospital, the minister cited the latest data from the Directorate-General of Health, of 10,385 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours and of a new record in the number of patients in hospital with the disease, to highlight the seriousness of the epidemiological situation in the country.
“This is a sign of high concern”, she said, stressing that the health system was s “in a situation of extreme effort.
