The director of the DGS Infection Prevention and Control and Antimicrobial Resistance Program (PPCIRA), José Artur Paiva, spoke to the Lusa agency after the Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte, which encompasses the Santa Maria and Pulido Valente hospitals, imposed the use of wearing a mask during hospitalisation for professionals and visitors.

The intensive care doctor explained that each health unit has its local PPCIRA unit and, as such, the hospital center's decision “is perfectly normal”, as part of “a sensible measure associated with the specific situation of the hospital in question”.

For DSG, the focus must be “on two essential vectors”: the protection of the most vulnerable and the accountability of citizens.

“SARS-CoV-2 has not gone away” and is now characterised by “an endemic situation, with fluctuations in the degree of incidence, like other respiratory viruses, cold and flu viruses, etc”.

At this point, the disease is in a “slightly greater” transmissibility phase given the entry of a new, more transmissible variant, but without an increase in the severity of cases, he highlighted.


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