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The Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), in Lisbon, launched an information campaign on vaccines against covid-19, in which four scientists clarify any doubts in short videos, the institution announced today.

“How was it possible to develop a vaccine for covid-19 so quickly?”, “Is the vaccine for covid-19 safe?”, “Will the vaccine for covid-19 help restore normality to our lives?” and “Should I get vaccinated for Covid-19?” are the questions that IMM researchers Bruno Silva-Santos, Luís Graça, Miguel Prudêncio and Pedro Simas answer.

The four videos – one for each question – will be available on IMM’s social networks.

On Friday, there will be an open question and answer session broadcast on the YouTube platform, where interested parties “will be able to direct their questions and clarify doubts about the vaccine development process, its safety and effectiveness and the perspective of the pandemic for the next few months, “says the IMM in a statement.

The IMM communication office told Lusa that more explanatory videos will be produced as more questions arise about vaccines on the part of people.

Justifying the initiative, immunologist Bruno Silva-Santos, deputy director of IMM, points out, quoted in the statement, that “this project arises from the urgent need to provide credible information on vaccination for covid-19, which is now starting”.

“Every day we hear doubts and concerns from so many citizens and it is up to us, scientists, to answer with the facts and clinical data that we have”, underlines, in turn, the virologist Pedro Simas.

In the video “How was it possible to develop a vaccine for covid-19 so quickly?”, Immunologist Bruno Silva-Santos responds with technological advances, the efforts of scientists and pharmacists and the immediate evaluation of results by drug regulators.

When asked whether the vaccine is safe, parasitologist Miguel Prudêncio replies that it is “absolutely safe”, has no serious side effects, just triggers normal reactions such as fever, fatigue or pain in the arm.

Virologist Pedro Simas assures that the vaccine for covid-19 “will make it possible to restore normality” to life, since it will make it possible to achieve group immunity against the new coronavirus that causes the infection.

For immunologist Luís Graça, “without a doubt” that people should be vaccinated, it is “a public health imperative” that “will save many lives”.

In Portugal, the vaccination campaign against covid-19 began on December 27 in hospitals, with the inoculation of health professionals. Today it has extended to nursing homes.

The vaccine administered is that of the Pfizer-BioNTech consortium, whose emergency use was approved on December 21 by the European Medicines Agency.

The European regulator is expected to comment on the use of another experimental vaccine, that of the modern biotechnology company, shortly.

Both vaccines are based on the same genetic engineering technology, which was used for the first time in vaccine production.

The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,843,631 deaths resulting from more than 85 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French news agency AFP.

In Portugal, 7,186 people died from 431,623 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.

Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by a new coronavirus (type of virus) detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.

ER // JMR

Brian Urquhart was the second diplomat hired by the United Nations after its creation in 1945.

Brian Urquhart, who was the second diplomat hired by the United Nations after its creation in 1945, and who helped shape the organization in the last years of the Cold War, died Saturday in Massachusetts, aged 101.

The news was announced this Monday by his daughter, Rachel Urquhart, to the local press, but without specifying the cause of death.

Urquhart was considered one of the most influential figures in the United Nations, having been a distinguished advisor to five secretaries-general of the organization and idealized the principles on which the UN is based.

Born in Dorset, United Kingdom, in 1919, he was part of the British army during World War II, something that admitted to having taught him all the “very practical idealism” that guided his diplomatic career.

In the mid-1950s, being one of the few with military experience in the team closest to the secretary-general of the time Dag Hammarskjold, he helped carry out UN peacekeeping missions through the creation of the UN Emergency Forces, which , in 1956, were sent to oversee the end of hostilities between Egypt and Israel in the Suez Canal.

UN peacekeeping missions are considered to be his great legacy, although they are not included in the United Nations Charter. These missions, which aim to send armed or unarmed soldiers to accompany the implementation of peace agreements, are now known as the ‘blue helmets’ and continue to be present in various areas of the world that are in crisis.

Although Urquhart spent much of his career at UN headquarters in New York, he was also a mediator and diplomat in some of the most complicated conflicts the United Nations has followed, such as those in Congo, Cyprus, Kashmir, Namibia and the Middle East.

His role at the UN was recognized this Monday by the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who said in a statement that “the mark that Brian [Urquhart] left is one of the most profound in the history of the organization”.

“As an adviser to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, he helped define the scope of UN action in the face of armed conflicts and other global challenges. And as a close assistant to [political scientist] Ralph Bunche, the recognized UN member and Nobel Prize winner. Peace, helped to establish and later to boost peacekeeping missions, “said Guterres.

In addition to his official responsibilities, Sir Brian Urquhart was seen as the unofficial historian of the UN, and he defended the public perception of the organization in his autobiography “A Life in Peace and War”, in addition to writing several reviews for the New York Review of Books.

 

The Government of Madeira today approved new measures to contain contagions with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that include a ban on traffic between 11 pm and 5 am, the opening schools and reinforcement of inspection.

In view of the increase in cases of contagion with the new coronavirus verified in the archipelago, the Madeiran executive met with the representatives of the health authorities in the region to decide on the new measures, and no statements were made to the media.

In the statement distributed after the meeting, it can be read: “despite the measures developed by the regional authorities and the collaboration of the population, to ensure public health, at the same time that we seek to keep all regional economic activity in operation, thus protecting the posts work, an increase in the number of cases was confirmed “.

The Regional Government of PSD / CDS coalition says that due to this situation it is “necessary, in the coming days, to introduce more measures, with a view to not spreading the virus”.

“As of 00:00 on January 5, 2021, circulation in the Autonomous Region of Madeira is prohibited in public roads, between 11 pm and 5 am, with the exceptions to be announced tomorrow by the Government Resolution”, stresses the executive in the document.

It also warns that “vaccination is ongoing, but everyone has to maintain the necessary health safety rules, to protect the entire population”.

With regard to the opening of schools in the region, with Madeira having a universe of 52 thousand elements, including student teachers and employees, the regional executive adopted specific measures for the three municipalities with “the highest incidence of cases”, namely, Funchal, Câmara de Lobos and Ribeira Brava.

In these municipalities, the restart of the courses will take place “progressively”, aiming to allow the health authorities to carry out a “concentrated and dedicated assessment of the situation” and “as the tests are being carried out, the teaching establishments will be opened” , highlights.

According to the perspectives of the Regional Government, in these three municipalities, private public schools must reopen until January 11, while in the remaining educational establishments in the other municipalities, the timetable remains the same, starting classes next Monday (January 4 ).

The island government informs that “the testing teams will start their work on Monday morning, January 4th, in the three identified municipalities, with the aim of tracking the more than 6,000 teachers and educational assistants”.

Due to this situation, “extracurricular activities in Funchal, Câmara de Lobos and Ribeira Brava will be suspended until January 10, 2021”, with guardians entitled to have a justified lack of work to support their students.

In regional public administration, face-to-face work will be reduced to a minimum, starting on Monday and until January 15.

The Madeiran government also decided to suspend home visits until January 15, continuing the process of testing and vaccinating professionals and users and limiting the maximum mobility of professionals between establishments.

As for bars and restaurants, the opening hours are established until 10:30 pm, “which includes the ‘take-away’ activity and restaurant activity in large areas”.

Another of the decisions made public was the reinforcement of inspection to “guarantee compliance with the rules in force throughout the Region”.

“All of these measures will be the subject of a resolution by the Government Council, which will take place on the morning of Monday, January 4, 2021”, concludes the statement.

Based on the latest data released by the Regional Health Directorate, on Sunday, Madeira recorded 65 new positive cases of covid-19 on Sunday, totaling 734 active situations, of which 558 are locally transmitted.

The demand for yoga, pilates, meditation and outdoor or ‘online’ classes with ‘personal trainer’ (PT) increased after confinement due to covid-19 and registration in these modalities continue to increase, reveal several teachers.

Georgina Miranda, North American yoga and meditation teacher in Porto, says that since the emergency of the pandemic was lifted, there has been an increase in demand for yoga and meditation classes, considering that the greatest need for therapies that involve the physical and mental part as a whole is justified by provoking feelings of well-being to people.

People feel “better”, with “more inner power” and “controlling emotions”, even if everything is “crazy” abroad, describes Georgina, who teaches yoga and meditation classes in the center of Porto, in a space called Manna, which receives local practitioners and foreign tourists.

For Georgina, the gift of the yoga practitioner to settle in the present moment is “important”, because it helps him to connect with something bigger than his “I” and his “stress”.

People are “suffocating” with the uncertain future or with “remorse from the past” and yoga helps to enjoy the “now”, he explains.

Diana Freitas confesses that yoga has given her the “strength” and “tranquility” necessary to spend the days with her children at home during the state of emergency and that, now, she does not want to abandon the practice of meditation and yoga. ” which was something that gave me a huge support ”.

The owner of Manna, Hélder Miranda, confirms an increase in demand for therapeutic classes with the pandemic.

With the lack of definition, the presential yoga classes passed and became “sold out” a week or two in advance, he says, noting that there is an increasing demand from German and Nordic tourists in that space located in the heart of the city of Porto, glass walls and a roof that opens to the sky, giving the feeling of being in nature.

Joana Cruz, pilates teacher, balance training, mobility, muscle toning, ‘bodybalance’ and stretching training, says that classes that treat the individual as a whole (body and mind) are “gaining ground” to other modalities.

“Holistics [yoga, pilates, bodybalance] bring people tranquility that other classes don’t. When they enter a holistic room they leave it lighter. They take a completely different energy boom ”, he describes, highlighting that, with the lack of definition, the solution to practice physical activity changed from the interior of the gymnasiums to the outdoors.

Exercise in public parks, beaches, municipal gardens, areas close to the metro or even next to football stadiums has worked well, he says.

“I have been giving pilates classes abroad and I have been increasingly in demand. People are afraid to go back to the gym, to catch the virus”, he describes.

PT Vítor Silva has no doubt that there is a paradigm shift with the covid-19, noting that online classes and outdoor training are here to stay.

“A lot of people found that ‘online’ works for them, which is great” and the ‘outdoor’ in the summer time also “works very well”, because there are sun and green spaces in Porto.

Laura Silva, a student who opted for online and outdoor training with PT, says she dropped out of the gym because of the state of emergency.

“During quarantine I always took [classes] via virtual. Then, when the restrictions were lifted, I started to do it without being a virtual route because I like being in contact with nature and being with the teacher present ”, he says, adding that doing physical exercise outdoors is much more“ challenging ”.

“I feel much better and can manage my schedule differently from the gym. In most gyms, at peak times, it is difficult to do the exercise or class we want, while on the street we can exercise at any time we want without the constraints without being full of people, especially in this dark time ”.

Patrícia Fonseca, psychologist and PT, reports that, with the lack of definition, her students started to prefer the ‘outdoor’ exercise.

The teacher says that with the arrival of the pandemic, working the students’ bodies and minds with the help of psychology, could be the “perfect junction” of the two professions, because people need a more global response at an especially “challenging” time. .

André Cottim, PT in Porto, maintains that the new paradigm will continue as long as people are afraid, because going to the gym is still “synonymous with contagion”.

“The fear of the unknown and the invisible is very intrinsic in people”, he observes, referring that, the older the age group, the lower the rate of gym goers.

“It is increasingly noticed that people who go to the gym are people, as a general rule, up to 50/55 years old”.

CCM // ACG

The year we will not forget and the New Year we wish to remember

A year ago today I published an extensive article on these pages, which I titled “A Decisive Decade”, in which I stated our ambitious agenda for the decade, around the four major strategic challenges we face: climate change, demographic dynamics, digital transition, inequalities.

Two months later, on March 2, Portugal was diagnosed with the first case of covid-19. From one moment to the next, the world was swept away by a pandemic that decimated lives and created the biggest global economic crisis in our lives. Among us, we already regret the loss of 6906 lives and more than 400 000 people are or have been infected. The public health crisis has had a dramatic effect on all dimensions – personal, family, social, professional – of our lives. And it hit our economy brutally, especially in sectors such as tourism, restaurants, commerce or culture, interrupting a four-year cycle of growth above the Eurozone average, a strong reduction in unemployment, growth in exports, improving incomes, which culminated in the first budgetary surplus of our democracy.

The collective mobilization of the Portuguese, the ability to convert our industry and its workers to the production of individual protection means, the prompt adaptation to teleworking, especially of teachers and students, and the extraordinary dedication of health professionals and professionals and other essential services allowed us to overcome the first wave of the pandemic. It was a year in which we reinforced our sense of belonging to a community that did not give up hope, resisted, fought, which surpassed itself as a nation. And so we continue to contain this second wave and prevent further upsurge.

It is in these moments of crisis that the importance of a robust social state and balanced public finances is emphasized. What would the last months have been like without a public school that, even though closed, ensured by all means the continuity of learning? And without Social Security support lay-off companies, unemployed workers, who created new social benefits to respond to atypical forms of work, reinforced support for homes? And, above all, without the NHS, which from public health to intensive care units responded to an unprecedented pressure in its 41 years? What would it have been like if we could not have increased public spending by € 4107M without having to resort to any tax increase and keeping our external credibility unscathed? Just in the context of extraordinary measures to support employment and family income, we supported more than 2 million people and 150 thousand companies, in a unique public policy effort.

This was also a defining moment for the European project. This time the European institutions were swift and assertive in their response, mainly to the historic decisions of joint purchase of anti-HIV vaccines and the joint issuance of debt to finance an extraordinary program of economic recovery.

I am sure that we will never forget this year of 2020. But we have the opportunity to make 2021 a year that we will want to remember.

Two decisive factors justify our confidence. The first, obviously, is the start of the vaccination process, which requires great international cooperation to ensure that the vaccine reaches all human beings, wherever they reside and whatever their economic and social condition.

 

In the European Union, and consequently in Portugal, the process will be long and will continue until the end of the first quarter of 2022, although the greatest vaccination effort is already concentrated between March and September 2021. If vaccines that are under development succeed, if those that are already approved are approved, if no mishap occurs with the production of the vaccine that is already being administered, everything will continue to go as planned and at the end of the summer it is possible that we will achieve the desired group immunity .

This is obviously the priority of the priorities and will concentrate a large part of our collective effort throughout the year that begins today.

It is “with gratitude, solidarity and hope that I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a promising year of 2021”, said Prime Minister António Costa in his Christmas message last night

António Costa added that “in such a hard and demanding time, it is an enormous honour for me to be here at your service, at the service of Portugal”.

Hope

“The day after tomorrow the vaccination process against Covid-19 begins, which, even though it is a phased and prolonged process over time, gives us renewed confidence that thanks to science it is even possible to quell this pandemic”, said António Costa.

And the “reinforced solidarity of the European Union” will “support the national effort to initiate a sustained recovery”, which will allow “to overcome the difficulties we currently live in”, but to face “the structural problems that historically limit the development potential of our Country”, he added.

“We defined a strategic vision for the future of Portugal, and we now have the means to be able to make it happen, thus opening new horizons for a fairer, more prosperous and more modern country to new generations”, he said.

Gratitude

The Prime Minister affirmed his gratitude “to all Portuguese for their capacity for adaptation and sacrifice, for their determination and discipline, for the civic responsibility with which they have collectively faced this pandemic”.

Gratitude, “in particular, to those who provide assistance to those who need it most”, “to the mobilization of the scientific community or to teachers”, “to all those who, since March, have kept the country running”.

“But in a very, very special way, I want to express my gratitude – I am sure that the gratitude of all Portuguese people – to health professionals who, day and night, do their best to treat those who are sick, so often with sacrifice of breaks , time for rest and contact with your own family ”, he said.

Solidarity

António Costa expressed his solidarity with the families of victims or patients of Covid-19, of those who live outside Portugal and are unable to come and miss them.

Solidarity still with “all families, because, in truth, none could join as usual, and in the home of all of us, this Christmas had to be celebrated in a different way”.

But, above all, “to all – and so many are – who suffer the serious economic and social consequences of this pandemic”.

 

The Prime Minister said he was aware “of the harshness of many of the measures that we had to take throughout this year”, and “of the profound impact of these measures on the lives of all of us” to “contain the transmission of the virus, guarantee the responsiveness of health services and, fundamentally, save lives ”.

 

«Faced with an unexpected and unknown virus, the Government has tried to respond in the best way, with balance and common sense». “We certainly did not do everything well”, “but we have not bargained or bargained for efforts,” he said.

 

The SNS 24 Call Centre answered over 3.67 million calls so far this year over double that of 2019.

But how has it evolved? What is it like for those working there? What pressures are they under? How does it affect their lives?

Nine months on from the start of Covid-19 this excellent article outlines in operators own words the work that they undertake and how they deal with people’s fears and anxieties.

“We are the first line”. Beating the pandemic and tiredness with one call at a time

The covid-19 marks a before and after in the life of the SNS24 line and its health professionals, who, in addition to the struggle to overcome the pandemic, also try to overcome the fatigue of nine months of unrelenting calls.

In the ‘call-centre’ located in the centre of Lisbon, a few dozen professionals distributed throughout an ‘open space’ seek to respond to people’s concerns, while a monitor is charging the numbers of the service in real time. Calls do not stop, but you cannot hear phones ringing incessantly with the demand for an answer; everything is digital, fast and repeated by professionals to the point of seeming mechanized.

José Gouveia

At the age of 51 and since 2003 in the contact centre of the National Health Service, the nurse José Gouveia, who also works in the general surgery service of Hospital Garcia de Orta, in Almada, admits to Lusa that this was “a very complicated year” and that the first wave of the pandemic confronted the SNS24 with “total despair”.

“We are the first line in serving and meeting people’s doubts, since there were limitations for health centres and emergency rooms. We were almost the only possible help, albeit with difficulties”, he says, calmly, in contrast to the busy days due to the impossibility of responding to all problems.

And it was not just on the other end of the line that changes took place. José Gouveia responds to calls over the course of the shift with his mask on, in the image of all his colleagues, now a few meters away from security and with many in teleworking situations. When you leave, it will be time to head to the hospital to continue the fight and be replaced by another colleague, who does not sit down before disinfecting the work area.

New procedures were instituted, new guidelines were defined and everything had to be assimilated without wasting time, in a context in which information about the new coronavirus challenged even the most experienced professionals and generalized uncertainty about the future.

“It is necessary to have some experience, which counts here, but sometimes it is difficult with some tricks. It means having the experience of screening and trying to understand what it really is: if they are symptoms related to covid-19, anxiety, etc. It is the experience that gives us this ‘feeling’, this proficiency”, explains José Gouveia, guaranteeing to have “the same principles and the same dedication, but with more effort”.

Manuel Mourão

In the workspace next door, Manuel Mourão, a 52-year-old nurse with almost 30 professional experience, reviews in the days lived with this pandemic its beginning in the SNS24, in 2009, with the flu epidemic A. However, even with the accumulation of work in the emergency department of Hospital de São José, in Lisbon, refuses to let down.

“As I am in an emergency, the burden has been enormous and obviously health professionals are a little exhausted, but that is no excuse for us. As I usually say, every day I take my shower, wear my nurse’s uniform and go to the fight”, he summarizes, naming knowledge as a weapon to“ calmly clarify and give some very assertive guidelines” so that the pandemic is under control.

Unlike most days in the past few months, Manuel Mourão is in the building providing service instead of doing it from home. Although he misses living with friends created over 11 years, this nurse specialized in the field of psychiatry assumes the comfort of the option and recognizes the advantages in reducing the risks of contagion.

“The teleworking experience has been very positive. The pandemic has hurt many people, but for us it has also brought some benefits; we were already talking about it: ‘why not be at home with a computer doing this?’ There was never that opportunity, but the pandemic ended up pushing us more quickly towards that”, he says, before completing another journey and leaving his post.

Catarina Rebelo

Catarina Rebelo, a 25-year-old nurse, arrives to fill the position. After disinfecting the table, the computer and the kit, she puts his rubbers on the headphones to start answering calls. This is the routine he embraced about a month ago, after deciding to reply to an email from the Ordem dos Enfermeiros asking for applications for the SNS24.

“I felt that there was a need to want to participate in helping the front line of the pandemic and that I was unable to exercise at my workplace. So, I opted for this place, being a place where we are very in contact and we help people, despite not being directly cared for”, confesses the young woman, who still lives in her parents’ house and also works in a private clinic.

Without hiding that coming to SNS24 was a purely “personal” choice and driven by the desire for a “new adventure”, Catarina Rebelo already recognizes the tiredness in her colleagues after a “scary” November that she marked in her early days the peak of the second wave of the pandemic in the country.

“In fact, there were a lot of calls on hold when I joined and it was a completely new thing. It was quite scary”, he recalls, although later of “loving” the experience: “ It is very motivating that we are here to help people and they show even during the calls that they are satisfied with our help and our support. And this is gratifying”

Carla Miguel

A few lines ahead, Carla Miguel continues to answer calls beyond the end of the shift. In this case, a father asks on the other end of the line how to deal with the fever of the 12-month-old baby and the nurse, 56, punctuates each question with his left hand, as his right hand clicks on the mouse to enter data on the computer. “If you run your hand over her neck, you feel ganglia,” she asks, while she herself runs a hand over her neck.

Already with two children also involved in the “front line” of the fight against covid-19, Carla Miguel highlights the impact that the pandemic had on people’s feeling of security in relation to their own existence, both individually and collectively.

“The human being has become very weak in this context, all the certainties that we had … There is nothing acquired, we are all very afraid and the instability of insecurity is what concerns me the most. It is a ‘bug’ that nobody sees, a micro-organism with statistical data that leaves us completely defenceless”, she says.

Before going on to another phone call, she introduces some more information into the system, in a process that he fears to increase again from January, because of the easing of the restrictions on the Christmas season.

“We were able to control and keep a lot of people at home, but this is a time when there are people who think from the outset that with a negative test it is all safe and this will cause hospitalizations to increase in this third phase in January. I’m scared out there”, she confides, in a 2020 that was “very hard” and left her in service “from eight in the morning to ten at night” in several days.

Maria Cortes Director of SNS 24

“It is a permanent effort”, completes the director of SNS24, Maria Cortes, for whom the expectation of “light at the end of the tunnel” launched by the start of vaccination against covid-19 reinforced the determination.

“We have to consider that the effort was worth it and that we are motivated to continue until there is a time when we will live our lives again in a free and more relaxed way”, notes the official, who has been at SNS24 since 2017. Until when that moment arrives, it highlights the fact that “no outbreak occurred in the ‘call centres’” and that the system resisted the changes introduced throughout the year.

From a capacity for 200 calls simultaneously up to 2,000 in just nine months, the SNS24 has also grown in the number of professionals and in its automation of service processes, with the entry of two ‘bots’ to collect responses and which, according to Maria Cortes, allowed significant efficiency gains in call times, not only in the present, but also for the future: with or without covid-19.

“SNS24 started in 1998 with a line called ‘Dói Dói Trim Trim’, evolved to Saúde 24 and has a whole tradition of telephone screening in the most diverse areas. It has not yet emerged for the covid”, he stresses, envisioning a positive horizon for the service: “Due to the role it had in the management of the pandemic, the visibility it gained and the trust it generated in the population, the SNS24 will continue to have a determining role at the level access to health care”.

SNS24 already answered more than 3.670 million calls in 2020

The president of the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health (SPMS), Luís Goes Pinheiro, highlighted the responsiveness of the SNS24 line in a 2020 marked by the covid-19 pandemic, with a number of answered calls exceeding 3.670 million.

“More than 3,670 million calls have already been answered in the SNS24. It is, in fact, an especially significant number, considering that last year 1.5 million calls were not even answered. Therefore, more than we have already doubled the number of calls answered in the past year and, as we know, in a context that was not regular throughout the year” said Luís Goes Pinheiro in an interview with Lusa.

Stressing the year with the “greatest demand ever” of SNS24 by citizens, the president of the SPMS did not fail to admit the problems recorded in the first peak of the pandemic, in March, but emphasized the adaptability of the service, which in November surpassed all the records, with more than 816 thousand calls answered, including more than 38 thousand in a single day.

“We have more than 5,600 health professionals providing care on the SNS24 line. Some residents in the seven ‘call-centres’ that currently exist throughout the country and others at a distance, with equipment that allows them to provide this support to the line from their homes or from other locations. This is the big difference: at the beginning of the pandemic, the number of health professionals would not reach 1,000 and today there will be more than 5,600”, he noted.

“We have diversified the professions that currently provide services on the line; they continue to be mostly nurses, but we also have psychologists – namely within the scope of the psychological counselling line and about 55 thousand people have already been assisted who could benefit from this service -, dentists, pharmacists and also sixth year medical students ” , he said.

Between the recognition of covid-19 as “a fatality that caught everyone with a lot of violence” and the effect of change for the better that the pandemic had on SNS24 and that provided “a very special year”, Luís Goes Pinheiro insisted on noting the new perception of the Portuguese about the service.

“They were able throughout this year – in a context as difficult for all of us as was the context of the covid-19 pandemic – to count on this line and the support of the more than 5,600 health professionals who today provide services and who were throughout these various hard months of pandemic an ever-present voice and an open door for all those who felt that, in some way, they needed the attention of the NHS”.

Written by: João Godinho 

https://24.sapo.pt/atualidade/artigos/somos-a-primeira-linha-vencer-a-pandemia-e-o-cansaco-com-uma-chamada-de-cada-vez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fighters scattered on the western line are said to have played “friendly matches” with those on the opposite barricade. Friendly matches played in no-man’s-land, which is like saying on neutral ground. Between the trenches of some and the trenches of others

There are reports that on December 25, 1914 (precisely 106 years ago), several football matches were played between enemy lines, in what was the first major pause in one of the most bloody and brutal confrontations that man had on a global scale.

We were in the middle of World War I.

Although on that day there were records of the deaths of hundreds of English soldiers (in the trenches of France and Flanders), the truth is that football worked there as a kind of pause button. Messenger of peace.

“It is important that we never forget these examples. They make us believe that nothing is impossible because humanity, all humanity, speaks the same language and responds to the same impulses, feelings and appeals. Sport is one of the ones that most contributed to add them”.

The story refers to that rare and unique moment as “The Christmas truce”.

Fighters scattered on the western line are said to have played “friendly matches” with those on the opposite barricade. Friendly matches played in no-man’s-land, which is like saying on neutral ground. Between the trenches of some and the trenches of others.

It is important to bear in mind that, at that time, almost all healthy adults (and others) were required by their countries to be in the first line of combat. Many of them were football players at the time.

Herbert Smart (then Aston Villa’s spearhead in the service of the British army) said he had walked across to exchange cigarettes for cigars with a German soldier. He learned that he spoke English well because before the war started he worked as a waiter in a London restaurant. And he also learned that he and most of his companions did not want to be there, fighting. They were afraid to die. They wanted everything to end quickly, to get back to their lives, with their families. He said that the handshake, as a farewell, was emotional. Both knew that they would never see each other again and that, a few hours later, they would be back on the battlefield to confront each other as enemies. Enemies who, hours before, talked like friends.

This little piece of history illustrates the healing power that sport has.

It was like that, with the truce decreed by the Olympic Games of Antiquity, with Jesse Owens (who defied the Nazi ideology by winning in Berlin), with the message sent by Mandela through the brilliant selection of South African rugby and with hundreds of others examples from various moments in history. From all sides.

It is important that we never forget these examples. They make us believe that nothing is impossible because humanity, all humanity, speaks the same language and responds to the same impulses, feelings and appeals. Sport is one of the ones that most contributed to add them.

To make it a battlefield is to betray the memory and honour of all those who, in 1914, realized that it was the exact opposite. If we don’t learn from the present, we learn from the past.

I wish you a very happy Christmas, full of special moments and with those who are most important.

 

The President of the Republic left a Christmas message in which he calls for a “broad consensus” and for “strengthening social cohesion” to face the economic and social pandemic that will dominate 2021, when the pandemic “If it’s fading”.

In the Christmas message, released through the Jornal de Notícias, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa talks about the challenges that the country has been experiencing and those it has to face in 2021, stating “there is and must be another look at Christmas 2020”, which implies a medium-term vision.

“Christmas 2020 is experienced with two simultaneous pandemics and with a dramatic experience of aggravated social gaps. And this combination of crises turns this Christmas into a never-before-seen terrain ”, he stresses.

In his opinion, “the most urgent thing is to look at Christmas 2020 with a shorter term vision – to prevent it from creating objective conditions for a negative or very negative start in 2021”.

“Everything we can do to protect the coming weeks and months, must be done”, he explains.

For the head of state, “the broad consensus to create conditions for a better start in 2021, in terms of the health pandemic, should extend to what will be months of an outbreak and its prevention, while the vaccination progresses”.

It should also extend “to the concern about the economic and social pandemic that will dominate 2021, especially when the health pandemic is fading”.

“Broad consensus, stability, reinforcement of social cohesion, existence of reliable references. This is what Christmas 2020 demands from all of us, Portuguese, it continues to demand now and will continue to demand for some time ”, he stresses, in the message.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalls that, since March, the country has shown itself to live up to this demand: “We will not fade, these days, amid the responsible joy of the reunion and the rediscovery of the value of hope in resisting difficulties”.

“We have already travelled so much together and with unwavering determination, that nothing can lead us to lie down to lose what has been accomplished”, he stresses.

At the beginning of the message, the head of state begins by recalling difficult historical moments that marked other Christmases.

“Portugal knew, in the lives of less young people, Christmases at war. Those over 90 years old, the end of their childhood or the beginning of adolescence, reminds him. A war outside, but with constraints inside, for example in terms of the supply of certain goods or even a start in the early forties ”.

It also recalls the “Christmases in financial and economic and, consequently, social crisis” experienced by the “less young and young people”, recalling the emigration of “one million Portuguese, between the beginning of the 1960s and 1974, and continuing in crises in the 70s, 80s and second decade of the 21st century, different from each other, but all determining international interventions ”.

Alluding to Christmas 2020, he says that “it is a substantially new reality”: “It is a pandemic. The pandemic hit us ten months ago. Despite the hope of vaccines, it is to stay weeks and months, nobody knowing or being able to predict how many”.

The President also warns of the “psychological consequences of pandemics, in changing social behaviors, in changing community relations”.

“In the absence of comparative standards to measure the scope and depth of what has changed, what has changed, what will remain, what will leave as the pandemic eases and the economic recovery and recreation and correction of inequalities becomes visible ”, he says.

But, he points out, “with hesitations, discontinuities, quarrels, all of them dispensable and even counterproductive, the challenge is too important and the time too pressing, too, to behave other than to continue the feat and accelerate what, in the same line, we have to do it ”.

As has been the case since the second year of the presidential term, in 2017, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa addresses a Christmas message to the Portuguese through the pages of “Jornal de Notícias”. This year, the head of state makes a historical review of the difficulties that the country has gone through at other times to leave some warnings about what still awaits us, in the complex context of a pandemic that forced us to be far from those we love most. Appealing to the resilience of citizens and the need to accelerate the pace along the path that we have been tracing.

Read the message in full:

A pandemic Christmas

Portugal knew, in the lives of the less young, Christmases at war. Those over 90 years old, the end of their childhood or the beginning of adolescence, reminds him. A war outside, but with constraints inside, for example in the supply of certain goods or even a start in the early forties. Above all, those who are over 60 years old remember it, in particular those who came from Africa after 1974 and those who fought in Angola , Guinea and Mozambique . These memories remain impressive, even for those who only followed those times through censored television and messages from our military over Christmas.

Portugal experienced, in the lives of less young people and younger people, Christmases in financial and economic crisis and, consequently, social. It reminds him of less young people and more young people of several generations. Beginning in what appeared to be economic growth but would translate into the emigration of one million Portuguese, between the beginning of the 60s and 1974, and continuing in the crises in the 70s, 80s and second decade of the 21st century, different from each other, but all determining international interventions.

At different times, Portugal has known Christmases with very vast poverty, or with permanence of incompressible structural poverty – that is, very difficult reduction – or with this poverty amplified by the economic and financial crises. Portugal knew Christmases with epidemic outbreaks before Democracy and already in Democracy, but of limited duration, in addition to these Christmases.

Christmas 2020 is a substantially new reality. It is spent in a pandemic. The pandemic hit us ten months ago. Despite hope for vaccines, it is about to stay for weeks and months, no one knowing or being able to predict how many. With the health pandemic, an economic and social pandemic has emerged – in addition to the fundamental problems of our economy and our society. The increase in poverty and inequality was an immediate effect of the two pandemics. In a word, Christmas 2020 is experienced with two simultaneous pandemics and with a dramatic experience of aggravated social gaps. And this junction of crises turns this Christmas into an unprecedented terrain.

On the psychological consequences of pandemics. Changing social behaviours. Changing community relations. In the absence of comparative standards to measure the scope and depth of what has changed, what has changed, what will remain, what will leave as the pandemic eases, and economic recovery and recreation and correction inequalities become visible.

Of course, the most urgent thing is to look at Christmas 2020 with a shorter term vision – to prevent it from creating objective conditions for a negative or very negative start in 2021. And all we can do to protect the more weeks and months nearby, must be done. But there is and must be another look at Christmas 2020. Which implies a medium-term vision. The broad consensus to create the conditions for a better start in 2021, in terms of the health pandemic, should extend to what will still be months of the outbreak and its prevention, while vaccination progresses.

How to extend concern about the economic and social pandemic. That it will dominate 2021, especially when the health pandemic is fading. Broad consensus, stability, strengthening of social cohesion, existence of trust references. This is what Christmas 2020 demands from all of us Portuguese, it continues to demand now and will continue to demand for some time to come.

Since March, we have demonstrated that we can live up to this requirement. In these days, we will not be lost among the responsible joy of the reunion and the rediscovery of the value of hope in resisting difficulties. We have already traveled so much together and with unwavering determination, that nothing can lead us to lie down to lose what has been accomplished.

With hesitations, discontinuities, quibbles. All of them expendable and even counterproductive. The challenge is too important and time too pressing, too, to behave anything other than to continue the feat and accelerate what, along the same lines, must be done.

 

Covid-19 marks a before and after in the life of the SNS24 line and its health professionals, who in addition to the struggle to win the pandemic also try to overcome the fatigue of nine months of unrelenting calls .

In the ‘call-center’ located in the center of Lisbon, a few dozen professionals distributed throughout an ‘open space’ seek to respond to people’s concerns, while a monitor is charging the numbers of the service in real time. Calls do not stop, but you cannot hear phones ringing incessantly with the demand for an answer; everything is digital, fast and repeated by professionals to the point of seeming mechanized.

At the age of 51 and since 2003 in the contact center of the National Health Service, the nurse José Gouveia, who also works in the general surgery service of Hospital Garcia de Orta, in Almada, admits to Lusa that this was “a very complicated year” and that the first wave of the pandemic confronted the SNS24 with “total despair”.

“We are the first line in serving and meeting people’s doubts, since there were limitations for health centers and emergency rooms. We were almost the only possible help, albeit with difficulties ”, he says, calmly, in contrast to the busy days due to the impossibility of responding to all problems.

And it was not just on the other end of the line that changes took place. José Gouveia responds to calls over the course of the shift with his mask on, in the image of all his colleagues, now a few meters away from security and with many in teleworking situations. When you leave, it will be time to head to the hospital to continue the fight and be replaced by another colleague, who does not sit down before disinfecting the work area.

New procedures were instituted, new guidelines were defined and everything had to be assimilated without wasting time, in a context in which information about the new coronavirus challenged even the most experienced professionals and generalized uncertainty about the future.

“It is necessary to have some experience, which counts here, but sometimes it is difficult with some tricks. It means having the experience of screening and trying to understand what it really is: if they are symptoms related to covid-19, anxiety, etc. It is the experience that gives us this ‘feeling’, this proficiency ”, explains José Gouveia, guaranteeing to have“ the same principles and the same dedication, but with more effort ”.

In the workspace next door, Manuel Mourão, a 52-year-old nurse with almost 30 professional experience, reviews in the days lived with this pandemic its beginning in the SNS24, in 2009, with the flu epidemic A. However, even with the accumulation of work in the emergency department of Hospital de São José, in Lisbon, refuses to let down.

“As I am in an emergency, the burden has been enormous and obviously health professionals are a little exhausted, but that is no excuse for us. As I usually say, every day I take my shower, wear my nurse’s uniform and go to the fight ”, he summarizes, naming knowledge as a weapon to“ calmly clarify and give some very assertive guidelines ”so that the pandemic is under control.

Unlike most days in the past few months, Manuel Mourão is in the building providing service instead of doing it from home. Although he misses living with friends created over 11 years, this nurse specialized in the field of psychiatry assumes the comfort of the option and recognizes the advantages in reducing the risks of contagion.

“The teleworking experience has been very positive. The pandemic has hurt many people, but for us it has also brought some benefits; we were already talking about it: ‘why not be at home with a computer doing this?’ There was never that opportunity, but the pandemic ended up pushing us more quickly towards that ”, he says, before completing another journey and leaving his post.

Catarina Rebelo, a 25-year-old nurse, arrives to fill the position. After disinfecting the table, the computer and the kit, he puts his rubbers on the headphones to start answering calls. This is the routine he embraced about a month ago, after deciding to reply to an email from the Ordem dos Enfermeiros asking for applications for the SNS24.

“I felt that there was a need to want to participate in helping the front line of the pandemic and that I was unable to exercise at my workplace. So, I opted for this place, being a place where we are very in contact and we help people, despite not being directly cared for ”, confesses the young woman, who still lives in her parents’ house and also works in a private clinic.

Without hiding that coming to SNS24 was a purely “personal” choice and driven by the desire for a “new adventure”, Catarina Rebelo already recognizes the tiredness in her colleagues after a “scary” November that she marked in her early days the peak of the second wave of the pandemic in the country.

“In fact, there were a lot of calls on hold when I joined and it was a completely new thing. It was quite scary ”, he recalls, although later on“ loving ”the experience:“ It is very motivating that we are here to help people and they show even during the calls that they are satisfied with our help and our support. And this is gratifying ”.

A few lines ahead, Carla Miguel continues to answer calls beyond the end of the shift. In this case, a father asks on the other end of the line how to deal with the fever of the 12-month-old baby and the nurse, 56, punctuates each question with his left hand, as his right hand clicks on the mouse to enter data on the computer. “If you run your hand over her neck, you feel ganglia,” she asks, while she herself runs a hand over her neck.

Already with two children also involved in the “front line” of the fight against covid-19, Carla Miguel highlights the impact that the pandemic had on people’s feeling of security in relation to their own existence, both individually and collectively.

“The human being has become very weak in this context, all the certainties that we had … There is nothing acquired, we are all very afraid and the instability of insecurity is what concerns me the most. It is a ‘bug’ that nobody sees, a micro-organism with statistical data that leaves us completely defenseless ”, he says.

Before going on to another phone call, he introduces some more information into the system, in a process that he fears to increase again from January, because of the easing of the restrictions on the Christmas season.

“We were able to control and keep a lot of people at home, but this is a time when there are people who think from the outset that with a negative test it is all safe and this will cause hospitalizations to increase in this third phase in January. I’m scared out there ”, she confides, in a 2020 that was“ very hard ”and left her in service“ from eight in the morning to ten at night ”in several days.

“It is a permanent effort”, completes the director of SNS24, Maria Cortes, for whom the expectation of “light at the end of the tunnel” launched by the start of vaccination against covid-19 reinforced the determination.

“We have to consider that the effort was worth it and that we are motivated to continue until there is a time when we will live our lives again in a free and more relaxed way”, notes the official, who has been at SNS24 since 2017. Until When that moment arrives, it highlights the fact that “no outbreak occurred in the ‘call centers’” and that the system resisted the changes introduced throughout the year.

From a capacity for 200 calls simultaneously up to 2,000 in just nine months, the SNS24 has also grown in the number of professionals and in its automation of service processes, with the entry of two ‘bots’ to collect responses and which, according to Maria Cortes , allowed significant efficiency gains in call times, not only in the present, but also for the future: with or without covid-19.

“SNS24 started in 1998 with a line called ‘Dói Dói Trim Trim’, evolved to Saúde 24 and has a whole tradition of telephone screening in the most diverse areas. It has not yet emerged for the covid ”, he stresses, envisioning a positive horizon for the service:“ Due to the role it had in the management of the pandemic, the visibility it gained and the trust it generated in the population, the SNS24 will continue to have a determining role at the level access to health care ”.