During a hearing today, the PS-Madeira Parliamentary Group expressed their surprise regarding “the statements made by the President of the Regional Government, who admitted that he did not understand the daily figures presented by the General Health Directorate on new Covid-19 cases in the Region. They went on to ask why the President had not questioned the source material when local health figures had not been updated and the daily DGS figures were lower than those published by the Regional Health Authority.”
Recalling the justifications attributed by the national and regional entities regarding the mismatch in the numbers of infections presented by both, the PS-Madeira pointed out that “DGS recently claimed that 81% of new cases in Madeira had a 48-hour or longer period between diagnosis and notification due “to computer problems in a regional laboratory, which is currently being reconfigured.”
In this regard, the parliamentary group stressed the importance for Regional Health Authorities to “direct their efforts in providing reliable data, questioning sudden spikes or downward trends with regards to local figures, rather than engaging in a war of numbers against the DGS, whose information is regularly investigated and checked by several independent institutions. This arrangement is not replicated in Madeira.”
Furthermore, this situation has a negative impact on the island’s public image, as it is regarded as a region of ‘high transmission’ throughout Portugal.
Today the DGS recorded 18 new cases in Madeira.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
