“We started well and ended well [in response to the covid-19 pandemic], but there were aspects that were less well achieved in between. It is important to carry out an external, independent assessment to understand what went less well so that it can serve as a context and diagnosis to move forward and meet these needs”, said the president of the General Assembly of the Association of Public Health Physicians, Ricardo Mexia, who was speaking during the National Congress of the Order of Doctors, which takes place in Lisbon, in a debate entitled “What we learned from covid-19”.

Proactive stance

The epidemiologist noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) has the tools for this assessment, considering that there should be a proactive stance in the analysis of the system, whether in terms of its ability to prevent, detect and subsequently respond to needs.

“We have to be more proactive and less reactive”, he defended, considering that the country now has “the context to not make the same mistakes”.

The former president of the Portuguese Society for Intensive Care, João Gouveia, also said that the pandemic “exposed what is good and what is bad in health in Portugal”, considering, therefore, that it would be important to make “a serious analysis of what happened in order to draw lessons for the future”.