The covid-19 outbreak in Porto Santo, which peaked at 151 cases in the first half of August, is now in recession, but still with 66 active infections, said the island’s health delegate today.
“We are on a downward curve, the peak has already passed”, told the Lusa agency Rogério Correia, stressing that the second week of August was “the worst”, coinciding with the period of greater presence of young people from Madeira on vacation on the island.
The Porto Santo health delegate sent the disclosure of “exact data and numbers” to the end of this month, but added that half of those infected belong to the age group up to 19 years old and the other half up to 29 years old, with few being contaminated with senior age.
Rogério Correia said that only one of the various transmission chains is directly related to island residents, with the rest being generated mainly by Madeirans on vacation.
The increase in covid-19 cases in Porto Santo led the health authorities of Madeira to install a new space with 50 beds for isolating infected people, in the island’s multipurpose pavilion, as the dedicated hotel unit ran out of capacity.
“The multipurpose pavilion was used and is still active and we are going to keep it active preventively”, said Rogério Correria, noting that, currently, there is only one boy there.
The health delegate also indicated that a PCR testing operation is being carried out on the working population of Porto Santo, namely merchants, supermarket workers, hotels, bars and restaurants and taxi drivers.
“We have an island that is vaccinated and there may be a risk of having someone infected without symptoms”, he said, emphasizing that the objective is to “identify and isolate” any case as quickly as possible.
“So far, the results are negative,” he said.
The island of Porto Santo has about 5,000 inhabitants, but it is a popular destination in the summer months for holidays, especially by residents of Madeira, and this year has already registered a peak of 30,000 people.
In the first half of August, there were frequent gatherings of young people in the center of Vila Baleira, sometimes more than 2,000, especially between the closing time of the establishments – 00:00 – and the curfew – 01:00.