Following a citizen’s petition, the Administrative Court of the Circle of Lisbon provided verified COVID-19 data showing that only 152 patients died from the disease from January 2020 to April 2021, not 17,000 as Portuguese authorities claim. The remaining deaths were attributed to various causes.
Nonetheless, some experts remain skeptical about whether even those 152 deaths are actually due to COVID-19. In a recent article on his blog, Andre Dias, a lung disease specialist from the University of Tromso – The Arctic University of Norway, said the ruling’s reference to 152 death certificates being issued “under Justice Ministry supervision” is suspicious since all death certificates are issued under the auspices of Portugal’s Ministry of Justice.
Therefore, death certificates for the others who supposedly died of COVID-19 could’ve only been issued by those same auspices. “We live in a fraud of unprecedented dimensions,” wrote Dias.
Dias also said a court order had to be issued before the Justice Ministry released the death certificates. As such, all those responsible for handling COVID-19 data, from cases to deaths, should be tried in court “if there is any dignity remaining in the rule of law,” added Dias.
Since the pandemic began, Portugal officially recorded around 879,000 cases of COVID-19 and roughly 17,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More recently, Portuguese authorities have reintroduced draconian safety protocols in the Lisbon District following a surge in infections.
The number of daily and weekly infections in the district began surging again recently primarily because of the highly contagious Delta variant. The variant, also known to infectious disease experts as B.1.617.2, was first identified in India during a wave of infections there in April and May. It’s been linked to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in Nepal, Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom and many other countries in Europe.
