By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews

The Portugal Direção-Geral da Saúde reported today that over the weekend of August 14 and 15, 80% of young people aged 16 and 17 were vaccinated, said the Deputy Secretary of State and Health, Lacerda Sales. 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“In the vaccination of 16 and 17 years, we vaccinated 80% of this age group and, obviously, we will continue to vaccinate all those who are missing”, said António Lacerda Sales on the sidelines of the inauguration of the new facilities of the Lustosa health extension, in the municipality of Lousada , district of Porto, located in a former primary school.

The government official stressed that it was a weekend “with very good, extraordinary success”. 

António Lacerda Sales considered that this adhesion of young people of those ages “was a great lesson in maturity”, stressing that he hopes that “this lesson of civic awareness and maturity is now also transmitted to the younger age groups, from 12 to 15”. 

“Given this awareness and this maturity of our population, [we hope] that they can also be two weekends of great participation”, he reinforced. “In addition to self-scheduling, we will also have central scheduling and an Open House, which will facilitate the vaccination of these age groups”, he concluded. 

To date, Portugal has administered 13,529,952 total vaccines, including more than 2.5 million in the past month.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the country has seen 1,004,470 total cases, including 17,573 deaths.