“As regards the number of new cases, we should be above 2,000 a day, at least,” the professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon told Lusa.

The latest report by the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA, estimates that the average number of cases within five days is at 735 daily infections nationwide, down to 619 on the continent.

For Manuel Carmo Gomes, since the SNS 24 line stopped prescribing Covid-19 screening tests, following the end of the alert situation in Portugal on October 1, the incidence data in the country “are far from representing reality”.

“We currently only know the results of tests carried out in hospitals and of people who took the trouble to obtain a prescription to test themselves”, warned the specialist, for whom this reduction in screening for infections is compromising the timely monitoring of the pandemic in Portugal.

In view of the changes in testing, the “guide” on the situation of Covid-19 in the country became the numbers of hospitalized and deaths, indicators that “even have weeks of delay in relation to the number of cases”, explained the epidemiologist.

In addition, the lack of knowledge of “how many cases of a disease occur reduces the perception of risk” among the population, stressed Carmo Gomes.

“An infectious disease that spreads silently takes advantage of the absence of measures that could slow its progress and, when we finally realize that the disease burden in the population is already high, it becomes more difficult to reverse its spread”, he added.

Cases rising

The epidemiologist admits that the number of infections may still be rising in Portugal, taking into account that there is a “slight growing trend” of people hospitalised due to covid-19.

“During September and part of October we had less than 400 beds occupied in the Covid-19 ward. Now we have almost 500 beds”, warned Manuel Carmo Gomes, adding that the deaths remained “for a long time at five and six a day, but in recent days the average has risen to 7.6 deaths”.

“We hope that this trend is not confirmed, but we have to wait a few more days to find out”, he said.

One of the factors of uncertainty about the evolution of covid-19 has to do with the fact that, in recent months, the Ómicron variant has unfolded into numerous subvariants, which “have common mutations that allow them to evade our antibodies”, said the expert.

The specialist said that the coming weeks will be decisive to understand whether the circulation of these new subvariants, combined with the arrival of cold weather in Portugal, will contribute to a possible rise in cases and hospitalisations.