The Unlikely Saviour: Portugal’s National Health System and the Initial Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Abstract

What is the impact of COVID-19 on Portugal’s Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS), the country’s national health service? The story, still unfolding, has all the elements of a recipe for disaster: one of the most elderly populations in the world; a weakened SNS, the result of a litany of policies and interventions by the ‘Troika’ (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund); a health care delivery system focused on non-communicable diseases and long-term care; the growing public distrust in public services, compared to private, hotel-like health care facilities. We are aware that these are still the early days of the epidemic, yet it is safe to say that algorithmic scenarios of doom and gloom have so far been averted. In the past six months of the pandemic, the level of trust of the Portuguese population in the SNS and its health personnel has significantly improved, while the government has started to provide additional funding and to work for the expansion of the public system. At the very inception of the pandemic, private hospitals practically closed their doors to COVID-19 patients. Unexpectedly a new disease, COVID-19, by definition the foe of any health system, has granted the opportunity for a rare consensus amongst different key political and/or corporate actors in a long-called-for reform of the SNS. Social science and humanities, with their analytical tools and theoretical-conceptual frameworks, are mandatory in providing well-funded answers to such riddles and better grasping the reasons for the twist and turns.

Opinions, beliefs and knowledge of people with multiple sclerosis on COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on healthcare systems functioning and organization ( Neumann-Böhme et al, 2020 ). The growing number of COVID-19 patients led to several institutional reorganizations that implied a severe shortage of medical consultations, exams and elective treatments and had a deleterious impact on people with chronic diseases ( Tonna et al, 2020 ; Varanda et al, 2020 ). The confinement measures applied in order to reduce community contamination had also a severe impact on social services resources ( Mariani et al, 2020 ; Varanda et al, 2020 ).…”

A Wake-up Call for Burnout in Portuguese Physicians During the COVID-19 Outbreak: National Survey Study

“…At the time, 813 of the 22,749 total infected patients were receiving treatment for COVID-19 at the hospital, with 143 patients receiving intensive care [5]. Since Portugal has a total of 24,000 hospital beds available, including 430 beds in the intensive care unit, the health services were not operating at maximum capacity at the time [4,7]. However, Portugal has a low ratio of nurses per inhabitant, which may contribute to the burden of health care professionals during the pandemic [4,7].…”

“…Since Portugal has a total of 24,000 hospital beds available, including 430 beds in the intensive care unit, the health services were not operating at maximum capacity at the time [4,7]. However, Portugal has a low ratio of nurses per inhabitant, which may contribute to the burden of health care professionals during the pandemic [4,7]. Health care professionals from different fields (eg, internal medicine, anesthesiology, and pneumology) were assigned to intensive care services at this time [29].…”

“…As on December 17, 2020, according to the World Health Organization, after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, more than 72,000,000 cases were confirmed worldwide, with more than 1,600,000 deaths [2]. In Portugal, the first case was declared on March 2 [3,4], and as on December 17, 2020, a total of 358,296 confirmed cases and 5815 deaths were reported [5]. These numbers correspond to an infection rate of 3.48% and a mortality rate of 0.06% in the total Portuguese population (10,295,909 inhabitants) [6].…”

“…These numbers correspond to an infection rate of 3.48% and a mortality rate of 0.06% in the total Portuguese population (10,295,909 inhabitants) [6]. At the beginning of the first wave, on March 18, 2020, the Portuguese government declared a state of emergency to avoid virus transmission by applying confinement and social distancing measures [4,7,8]. The number of cases peaked in April 2020 during the first wave and started to decrease until September 2020, when a more severe wave began [4,5].…”