Tiago Petinga / Lusa
Former Director-General of Health, Graça Freitas
Former Health Director-General provides that the next pandemic is “much more complex”, fast, noisy and with a significant increase in “social fractures” on issues such as confinement and vaccination.
With experience in public health emergencies since 1997, Graça Freitas spoke, in an interview with Lusa, about the challenges of a “next big epidemic or pandemic” in a more complex world, with many more sources of true but also false information.
Five years after the first cases of COVID-19 in Portugal, on March 2, 2020, the Public Health specialist believes that it was learned a lot during this period and that the health system and Authorities are better prepared to face a new pandemic, but warned that “the next one will be on another level.”
“I don’t think it will be perfect [o combate]. It is impossible, because the world is much more complex and there are many more sources of true and not true information, ”he said, recalling that when he started working on epidemics and pandemics, such as the flu in 2009,“ the world was much less complex ”.
There were sources of scientific information, the experts advised traditional politicians and social communication bodies. “It was a world with less connections, interactions, less fast and safer,” while in the current scenario, “things are increasingly faster and more complex,” he said.
Therefore, he warned: “A next big epidemic or pandemic – which we will be sure – will be much more complex, much faster, much more noisier and with much more social fractures ”.
According to the expert, there will be “more social friction and divergent opinions between movements of society”, in relation to confinements, vaccines, medicines.
“Unless a next pandemic is so severe, so serious, so serious that we join us all again,” he said, considering that the population’s adherence to the authorities’ orientations in the Covid-19 pandemic “was absolutely exemplary”, which It should no longer happen in such an orderly way in a next pandemic.
“I don’t know if we will have a confinement as orderly again as we had in Portugal And in the vast majority of countries in the world, ”said Freitas, one of the faces of the fight against Covid-19 in Portugal.
Graça Freitas argued that the population’s adherence to the authorities’ guidelines was “an absolutely unique thing of civility and social participation”, also praising the role of those who worked to ensure that the essential goods, such as water, light, were not lacking, were not lacking. Gas, food, to those who were confined at home.
Despite the pandemic, which only in Portugal killed about 29,000 people“Life has worked” and the population has to “be proud of it”. He stressed that the country had the ability to organize within a few days and each has its role: “Some were in restraint at home, others to produce food, others to make press conferences, but each person fulfilled a particular paper and fulfilled well ”.
We are not prepared for another pandemic
Constitutionalists warn that the country is not prepared, in legal and legal terms, to face a new pandemic, considering that no lessons were learned from COVID-19, nor were the necessary changes.
“Before the pandemic, there was a total imprisonment, a total inadequacy of laws for such a situation and, currently, We are in the same situation”, Said Jorge Reis Novais, professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, noting that both the constitution and Portuguese legislation remain inappropriate to deal with a pandemic situation.
“What is done normally is done in Portugal: at the time, it is said, the insufficiency is seen, the problems are marked, unconstitutionalities are committed-as they were committed to both the President of the Republic and the Government-and Then everything remains in it, ”he criticized.
“Now, Our legal framework is exactly the same Which was when, in early 2020, the pandemic began. Therefore, we are exactly in the same situation: there were no changes either the constitutional framework governing the state of emergency, nor in the legal framework governing the emergency administrative state, ”said Constitutionalist Teresa Violante.
Teresa Violante recalled that during the pandemic, “both legal agents and political agents detected insufficiencies” in the legal system, but these shortcomings were not supplied.
“Therefore, we did not withdraw lessons”he criticized, stating that the Portuguese political system seems to have a “permanent disability, as in other matters, to carry out and end reforms that are necessary.”
Jorge Reis Novais argued that for the country to properly prepare for a new pandemic, it is necessary to review the Constitution in order to predict a “situation in which some fundamental rights must be limited, without having to establish a state of emergency”.
“It was in another life”
From his experience, Graça Freitas recalls that he hardly believed when he arrived at the porch of his house and saw no one on the streets.
“I say many times: It was in another life, it was in another incarnationbecause it was indeed an intense event for most people. Unlike what they were used to in their routine and somewhat unnatural, ”he said.
About if he ever thought he would be for history as one of the faces of the fight against the pandemic, he said no: “And even if I thought I could have an epidemic (…), never, but never designed for myself that could be identified as a face of the pandemic. ”
During the pandemic, Graça Freitas faced various challenges, such as threats, criticism, a breast cancer, but giving up “never an option.”
He said that sometimes minutes before falling asleep I thought, “I can’t take this anymore, tomorrow I go out (..) I’m so tired, this is so difficult.” However, “it was an instant discouragement, the next day it was no longer there.”
