“The epidemiological situation in the Algarve is worrying. On the one hand, because the numbers are high and, on the other, because the estimate are of still of some growth, which puts pressure on the health services”, declared the Algarve Health delegate at a press conference.

At the conference promoted by the Faro District Commission for Civil Protection, in Loulé, Ana Cristina Guerreiro also pointed out concerns regarding the low temperatures, which “play in favour of the virus”, and the social activity prior to Christmas, with many contacts in spaces closed, which also “favour the possibility of contagion”.

According to the official, who quoted data from last Saturday, the Algarve registered 3,339 active cases of Covid-19 and 88 people were admitted to hospitals, 20 of them in intensive care and, of these, 14 ventilated.

As for active outbreaks, the Algarve currently accounts for 35, of which 20 are in schools in the region and two in elderly homes, one of which is “of some size”, but in the meantime “already stabilised”, she stressed.

According to Ana Cristina Guerreiro, there are currently, in the Algarve, 171 students infected by the new coronavirus and 2,487 in prophylactic isolation, 20 infected employees and 345 in isolation, and a total of 111 classes in isolation.

The Algarve Health delegate maintained that the children “are infected by family members”, because “they participate in family parties, with two or three families that come from different places and, often, it is the parents, indoors, who are contagious”.

In the region, she added, the incidence rate of Covid-19 has been “predominant” in the 30-39 age group, followed by that of 40-49 years, while “school-age children”, and the elderly “ have been spared.”

As for the profile of patients admitted to intensive care, the Health delegate pointed out that, in this last wave, "they are younger than in the first wave of winter" and that "approximately 50 percent of people are not vaccinated".

On the other hand, she underlined, there are also "some deaths of younger people, between 40 and 60 years old, usually associated with comorbidities and some who have not been vaccinated".

The president of the Regional Health Administration (ARS) of the Algarve, Paulo Morgado, assured, however, that the pressure on hospital capacity is "very far from the numbers of the so-called third wave" were, between December 2020 and February 2021.