Porto, Nov. 25, 2020 (Lusa) – Portugal’s minister of health, Marta Temido, on Wednesday said that the risk of the country not being prepared to vaccinate people against Covid-19 when it becomes available for distribution is “zero”, stressing that “the country has been preparing for a long time”.
At a news conference in Porto, in response to a question about the risk of Portugal not being prepared to start vaccination once an approved vaccine is available, Temido replied: “zero”. She then recalled the history of government decisions on this matter.
“Portugal has long been preparing to receive the Covid-19 vaccine,” she said. “Since the middle of the year, the [European] Commission and the European Medicines Agency have asked our country, as they have asked others, to appoint a representative, who then started working with a team that has been working … on the process of acquiring vaccines for each member state.”
She recalled the announcement made on 20 August by the prime minister, António Costa, that Portugal had authorised the purchase of 6.9 million vaccines against Covid-19, as part of coordination between EU member states, and to which the Portuguese state is to allocate Euro20 million, to underline the idea that the country “is working and prepared”.
“Our technicians have been working to identify the premises, the equipment necessary to accommodate the storage of vaccines,” said the minister. “And so, at the moment, what we are continuing to do is to ensure that we are prepared to receive the various types of vaccines that may come on the market.”
Temido also said that “Portugal has a very significant track record in terms of vaccination campaigns and [its] national vaccination plan.
“Maybe we haven’t discussed some things that other countries have discussed,” she said. “Maybe in those countries that already have them available, they are discussing whether the vaccine will be free. These are aspects of the discussion that have not been raised in our country.”
Worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed at least 1,410,829 lives out of more than 59.7 million confirmed cases of infection worldwide.
In Portugal, there have been 4,127 deaths associated with Covid-19 out of of 274,011 confirmed cases of infection
PFT/ARO // ARO.
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