[Trending News] Covid-19. First cases broke out five years ago “as a volcano”

When he took office in October 2017, Graça Freitas was far from thinking that he would face the battle against a disease that temporarily changed the world, killed about 29,000 people in Portugal, imposed social isolation and transformed how to communicate and even eat.

In an interview with Lusa, the public health expert reported how it was to live the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, which he described as “very intense” and with several steps.

He said he remembered “perfectly on the last day of 2019” when the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of a new disease caused by an unknown market in markets where living animals were sold in China.

Initially, the reaction was neither alert nor alert or alarm, since there is news about new viruses every year, but the experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003, made doctors vigilantes. although confident that the focus would be contained.

As more information arrived, the authorities realized that “the situation could be complicated” and, on January 21, 2020, DGS created a “Task Force”, with experts who worked in all epidemics since 1997.

They had, however, different currents of thought, with some more conservative and some more flexible in the measures to be adopted.

Divergences created “a kind of internal break” and led to a discussion of “so many hours” that experts ordered for the first time meals for remedies.

“We barely knew it would be a common thing these days and would be so important in the pandemic,” said Graça Freitas, with a smile.

Before the WHO declared the pandemic on March 11, Portugal had already activated the contingency plan used in the flu pandemic in 2009, which was referenced by the São João hospitals in Porto, Curry Cabral and Dona Estefânia, in Lisbon , who prepared to deal with the increase of cases.

The medical support line, previously focused on diseases such as Ébola and SARS, was reinforced with dozens of doctors to respond to the significant increase in calls with suspicious cases.

Until, “on March 2, it was like a volcano; finally, the first two cases,” one originated in Italy and another in Spain: “We knew we were going to have, we just didn't know when.”

The cases increased daily and, on April 26, the country entered the mitigation phase (disseminated virus), and began “to attend people in all hospitals, in all health services”.

For Graça Freitas, what happened in those first weeks “today even seems unreal”, such as the closing of the city of Whuan, the number of dead in Italy, as well as striking images, such as the Pope's celebrating “The Mass without anyone to attend”.

Communication also became “a huge challenge” as the pandemic spread, with March 11 to be decisive for its transformation.

“We realized that there was need to be direct and daily communication (…) because they were weeks of enormous uncertainty” and “there was a huge speed of news, images from around the world,” and passing on social networks, he stressed.

One of the great changes brought by the pandemic was the format of the `online favorite conferences. During the first video conferencing, on 11 March, Graça Freitas had to improvise the clothing, using a friend's scarves to hide informal clothes before airing, to be “more presentable.”

These video conferences became daily with the Minister of Health or the Secretary of State for Health and the Director of Health to transmit information in real time.

“It was an` online pandemic. Things happened directly and live, “said Graça Freitas, adding,” Every day we had a new learning. ”

The goal was to be “as transparent as possible and of course,” not exciting people too much, but not distressing them too much.

The new way of communicating involved the technical-scientific part, led by DGS, and the policy, related to final responsibility for decisions and measures adopted.

DGS and the government have not always been in agreement with measures, “but each one did their part.”

He exemplified with a measure that DGS defended from a selective school of schools in Felgueiras, where the first COVID-19 outbreak took place, and “the government decided, for social alarm reasons, to close all schools to Easter.”

“And it was not a wrong measure,” he said, commenting, “Politicians had to think about the impact on society, the economy, and often the panic that could generate on people's safety and, therefore, there was a complementarity here.” .

“I was always very comfortable, even when opinions did not converge, because they were, in fact, different papers and views,” he explained.