HEALTH NEWS
JANUARY 17, 20211:35 PM UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Portugal's health system on brink of collapse as COVID-19 cases surge

By Reuters Staff

2 MIN READ

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal’s public health system is on the verge of collapsing as hospitals in the areas worst-affected by a worrying surge in coronavirus cases are quickly running out of intensive care beds to treat COVID-19 patients.

“Our health system is under a situation of extreme pressure,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters on Sunday afternoon after a visit to a struggling hospital. “There is a limit and we are very close to it.”

The health system, which prior to the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe, can accommodate a maximum of 672 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units, or ICUs, according to health ministry data.

The number of people in ICUs with COVID-19 reached 647 on Sunday, according to health authority DGS. The Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators said the number of coronavirus patients needing hospitalisation was likely to dramatically increase over the next week.

Three days into a nationwide lockdown, the country of just 10 million people reported 10,385 new cases and 152 fatalities on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 549,801, with the death toll increasing to 8,861.

According to ourworldindata.org website supported by Oxford University, Portugal had the highest number of coronavirus cases in Europe per capita over the last seven days.

Most new cases were concentrated in Lisbon, where many patients at the city’s public hospitals have already been transferred elsewhere, including to health units in the country’s second biggest city Porto.

“We are already treating patients beyond our installed capacity,” said Daniel Ferro, director of Lisbon’s biggest hospital Santa Maria. “And we are not the only hospital where this is happening.”

The Garcia de Orta Hospital, across the River Tagus from Lisbon, said in a statement the hospital could soon enter a “pre-catastrophe” phase as it no longer has beds for coronavirus patients.

Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Jonathan Oatis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-portugal/portugals-health-system-on-brink-of-collapse-as-covid-19-cases-surge-idUSL8N2JS0FA

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"Names of Lagos
Lagos means "lakes" in Portuguese, the language of the first European immigrants known to visit the settlement, then already inhabited by the Awori and Bini and known to them as Oko.[1] From the first contacts with the region until the early 20th century, another Portuguese name for the city that was interchangeably used was Onim,[2] finally abandoned in favor of Lagos. Another theory is that Lagos was named after the city of the same name in Portugal which at the time was a major maritime hub for seafaring activity on the Atlantic Ocean. Although Lagos translates to "lakes" in Portuguese, it also means “Lagoon”, or a salt water body of water connected to the ocean by channels which flow depending on the tide. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, for instance, the Portuguese named the “Região dos Lagos” (Lakes Region) an area with lagoons very much similar to the Lagos Lagoon."

Launching the Portuguese Slave Trade in Africa

http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/launching_the_portuguese_slave




Iberian Roots of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1640
http://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/origins-slavery/essays/iberian-roots-transatlantic-slave-trade-1440%E2%80%931640

The union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns during the years 1580 to 1640 signaled the rise of a new era in the transatlantic slave trade. While the change may have been less noticeable in Brazilian ports such as Pernambuco, Salvador da Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro, after 1580 the Spanish Americas were directly connected to Portuguese-controlled slaving hubs in Atlantic Africa for the first time, resulting in unprecedented growth in the scale and volume of slave traffic to Spain’s American colonies. Another factor contributing to an increase in the slave trade’s volume during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was the rise of Luanda, capital of the Portuguese colony of Angola. Within just a few decades of its founding in 1575, Luanda and its hinterlands became increasingly important within the overall slave trade, exporting thousands upon thousands of West Central Africans to the Americas.

The years from 1595 to 1640 are perhaps best known as the period of the “Portuguese asientos.” Several powerful Portuguese men, including at one point the governor of Angola, signed a series of asientos or contracts with the Spanish Crown stipulating that certain numbers of Africans would be supplied to the Americas during certain years. For example, Pedro Gomez Reinel agreed to be responsible for arranging the transportation of 4,250 enslaved Africans to the Spanish Americas every year for a period of six years, beginning in 1595.

Estimates of the total volume of the transatlantic slave trade during this forty-five-year-period range from 200,000 to 300,000 enslaved Africans landed in the Spanish Americas. The differences in estimates proposed thus far may largely be explained by uncertainties regarding the frequency of contraband slave trading that, by all accounts, was endemic and widespread. In order to evade customs taxes, slave ship crews frequently concealed captives, or disembarked extra captives in secondary ports. Other voyages were completely unregistered; we know of their existence only because Spanish American officials apprehended some slave ships’ crew members, who typically claimed to have been “blown off course” while bound for some other destination, or “pursued by enemies” and “forced to land.”