"No vaccines will be wasted", assured Vice Admiral Gouveia e Melo on the sidelines of the visit to the Loures Vaccination Center, where on Saturday began to be vaccinated some of the more than 160 thousand young people of 16 and 17 years who signed up for last weekend.
At issue is the approaching expiration date of about 500 thousand Astrazeneca vaccines that the head of the 'task-force' explained will soon be sent to Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) and East Timor: "We're making the donation so that the vaccines will be useful to other peoples", such as Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde or East Timor.
Portugal has signed a protocol that has already allowed the sending of "more than 200 thousand vaccines", said Gouveia de Melo, defending that there should be a "concertation at international level", so that the richer countries could help the needier ones.
"We have to decide - and not only in our country, but in the more advanced countries with more economic capacity - if we could help other countries with less economic capacity, because the world well need solidarity," he argued.
The person responsible for the vaccination process in Portugal said he doesn't like to "waste a single vaccine," admitting that in a logistical process that involves "millions of doses" it is normal to lose some: "A vial is broken, or there is a degradation of the cold chain."
So far, according to the vice admiral's figures, little more than 20 thousand vaccines have been lost, which is "statistically quite reasonable" when compared to other countries.
"Of course I am not happy that we have lost vaccines, I wish we had lost zero," he admitted, recalling that the pandemic of covid-19 forced the assembly of about 300 vaccination centers a little throughout the country to respond to the vaccination program.
The most recent data show that 63.84 percent of the Portuguese are fully vaccinated against covid-19 and more than 70 percent have received at least one dose.
Last weekend, it was the turn of the 16 and 17 year old teenagers: of the approximately 200 thousand young people, 160 thousand have registered, and the vaccination centers are open to receive the rest.
