“An assessment, to be credible and to be useful, has to be well done and be rigorous and transparent. If it is done by an independent entity, which is committed to doing it with rigor and transparency, it is better accepted by others”, Eurico Castro Alves told Lusa.

According to the doctor, this type of assessment is already being carried out in European countries, such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, to understand what “has gone wrong, what can be corrected and what will be done better in the future when faced with situations similar to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"A country that does not measure itself is a country that does not know itself, I would even say that it is an irresponsible country", said the president of CNS, a platform that brings together close to 170 public, private and social entities linked to various areas of health activity.

After stressing that the pandemic is “not over yet” and that there are several uncertainties about its evolution, Eurico Castro Alves considered that this independent entity can be financed by public funds, but “cannot be appointed by the Government”.

“When we want to assess what happened, to check what was done wrong, it is above all to improve the system's responses, it is not with the intention of crucifying anyone”, assured the president of the CNS.

In the case of Portugal, CNS considers it important to assess the impact and effectiveness of measures taken to control the pandemic in the area of health.

Furthermore, according to this body, this is also the time to analyse the consequences of the Covid-19 management process on citizens' access to healthcare and on the degree of readiness of the system to respond to needs.

Another of the issues that the convention considers necessary to assess, has to do with the monitoring that is being carried out on the more than one million people who have been infected and what is the plan for the coming months and years.

The CNS was created in April 2018, assuming itself as a "permanent platform for dialogue between health partners and all citizens", bringing together numerous entities from the public, private and social sectors that operate in this sector in Portugal.