“The country has different councils with different capacities. There are places where the vacancies for self-scheduling have already run out and there are other places where they have not run out”, said Henrique Gouveia e Melo, after being honored in Vila Real.

“People who got to self-schedule first are waiting to be vaccinated. After these people are vaccinated, other places will open again for other people to be vaccinated”, assured the vice-admiral.

Gouveia e Melo added that vaccines are being distributed in the national territory in a “proportional way to the population” and that this self-scheduling modality “has the number of vacancies proportional to the population of each region”.

On 12 July, the self-scheduling of the vaccine against Covid-19 was made available for people aged over 23 on the Directorate-General for Health's portal for these appointments.

Following phase 2 of the vaccination plan and a greater number of vaccines received by Portugal, the self-scheduling portal went into operation on 23 April for people aged over 65 and, since then, has been available.