Politico reports:

Portugal’s streets are empty, its beaches cordoned off, the economy asphyxiated — yet there is cautious optimism the country may be pulling off an unlikely victory over the coronavirus.

With a quarter of the population of neighboring Spain, Portugal has around one-tenth of the number of cases. And while its coronavirus mortality rate hovers just above 3 percent, the figure is over 10 percent in Spain, 12 percent in the U.K. and 15 percent in France.

This in a country with more citizens aged over 80 than anywhere in the EU except Italy and Greece, plus a health service that’s poorly equipped and underfunded. Portugal has just 4.2 critical care beds per 100,000 people, the lowest in the EU. Spain has over nine such beds per 100,000, Germany almost 30.

“Due to the frailty of our health system it could potentially have been worse here than in Italy or Spain,” said Ricardo Baptista Leite, a physician specialized in infectious diseases and a lawmaker with the opposition Social Democrats (PSD).

“The Portuguese people understood very clearly that if we want to survive this, we would have to do even more than the others in crushing the curve, in prolonging and pushing forward the number of new cases,” he told POLITICO. “The country has shown tremendous solidarity.” [Continue reading…]