Luísa Meireles and Maria de Deus Rodrigues (text), Pedro Martins (video) and Miguel A. Lopes (photo)

Lisbon, Jan. 4, 2021 (Lusa) - Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, said that the technical task force's option not to vaccinate prime ministers or presidents first was the right one.

"In some other countries, there was the idea that they should start with prime ministers or presidents to set an example, but from that point of view the choice we made was the right one," the prime minister said in an interview with Lusa about the presidency of the European Union that Portugal is taking over in this first half of the year.

According to António Costa, contrary to what happens in other countries, there is a permanent national vaccination plan in Portugal and a history in this chapter, which means that "even though vaccinations are not compulsory, the population is comfortable with the idea of vaccination".

Costa also believes that the fact that it was health professionals who were the first to be vaccinated "gives everyone an enormous amount of confidence", and that there is "an obvious reason" that one had to start "by protecting those who can protect us".

"There is one thing I am sure of: if I have Covid, I want to have doctors who are in good health when I get to the hospital so that they can treat me, and not find a hospital where all the doctors are contaminated, so I think we took the right way," he said.

In Portugal, a technical task force defined the criteria for when different groups would be vaccinated, for reasons of disease, age, or their job. The plan also took the quantities that are being made available into account.

With the first batch, we knew that it had 9,750 doses, so we prioritised 150,000 people who were care home users and employees. How was the selection made?, he asked Did we just toss a coin?.

The 9,750 doses that were given to professionals considered a priority in first-line hospitals is an understandable criteria that responds to an effective need and that it is possible to achieve, as it was. For my part, when my turn comes, I will be vaccinated, he added.

Regarding his recent 14-day experience of prophylactic isolation, which he spent in S. Bento, and which he left on 30 December, António Costa said he took it as a "social responsibility".

[The isolation] "had to do with a social responsibility, which I share, or shared, for 14 days with 70,000 other Portuguese who were also confined, not because they had Covid, but because they had a risk contact and couldn’t have other contacts so as to stop the chains of contagion," he said.

He concluded: "As for Christmas, it was a unique experience, a lonely night, but fortunately technology today allows us to overcome that loneliness and I ended up zooming the four houses where my family had been split between this year".

LM/ADB // ADB

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