Estimated number of lives directly saved by COVID-19 vaccination programmes in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023: a retrospective surveillance study.

Background: By March, 2023, 54 countries, areas, and territories (hereafter CAT) in the WHO European Region had reported more than 2·2 million COVID-19-related deaths to the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Here, we estimated how many lives were directly saved by vaccinating adults in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023.

Methods: In this retrospective surveillance study, we estimated the number of lives directly saved by age group, vaccine dose, and circulating variant-of-concern (VOC) period, regionally and nationally, using weekly data on COVID-19 mortality and infection, COVID-19 vaccination uptake, and SARS-CoV-2 virus characterisations by lineage downloaded from The European Surveillance System on June 11, 2023, as well as vaccine effectiveness data from the literature.

Real-Time Classification of Causes of Death Using AI: Sensitivity Analysis.

Background: In 2021, the European Union reported >270,000 excess deaths, including >16,000 in Portugal. The Portuguese Directorate-General of Health developed a deep neural network, AUTOCOD, which determines the primary causes of death by analyzing the free text of physicians' death certificates (DCs). Although AUTOCOD's performance has been established, it remains unclear whether its performance remains consistent over time, particularly during periods of excess mortality.

Sharp increase in gonorrhoea notifications among young people, EU/EEA, July 2022 to June 2023.

Gonorrhoea cases increased steeply in women aged 20 to 24 years across 15 EU/EEA countries in July to December 2022 and January to June 2023 with, respectively, 73% and 89% more cases reported than expected, based on historical data from 2015 to 2019. Smaller increases among men due to heterosexual transmission were observed in nine EU/EEA countries. Interventions to raise awareness among young people about sexually transmitted infection risks are needed, emphasising the benefit of safe sexual practices and testing.

Spatial Analysis of Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Portugal.

Vaccine hesitancy tends to exhibit geographical patterns and is often associated with social deprivation and migrant status. We aimed to estimate COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in a high-vaccination-acceptance country, Portugal, and determine its association with sociodemographic risk factors. We used the Registry of National Health System Users to determine the eligible population and the Vaccination Registry to determine individuals without COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Understanding spatiotemporal patterns of COVID-19 incidence in Portugal: A functional data analysis from August 2020 to March 2022.

During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, governments and public health authorities collected massive amounts of data on daily confirmed positive cases and incidence rates. These data sets provide relevant information to develop a scientific understanding of the pandemic's spatiotemporal dynamics. At the same time, there is a lack of comprehensive approaches to describe and classify patterns underlying the dynamics of COVID-19 incidence across regions over time.

Task Force for a rapid response to an outbreak of severe acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in children in Portugal in 2022.

On 5 April 2022, the United Kingdom reported an increase of cases of severe acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in children, several needing hospitalisation and some required liver transplant or died. Thereafter, 35 countries reported probable cases, almost half of them in Europe. Facing the alert, on 28 April, Portugal created a multidisciplinary Task Force (TF) for rapid detection of probable cases and response.

A standardised protocol for relative SARS-CoV-2 variant severity assessment, applied to Omicron BA.1 and Delta in six European countries, October 2021 to February 2022.

Several SARS-CoV-2 variants that evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic have appeared to differ in severity, based on analyses of single-country datasets. With decreased testing and sequencing, international collaborative studies will become increasingly important for timely assessment of the severity of new variants. Therefore, a joint WHO Regional Office for Europe and ECDC working group was formed to produce and pilot a standardised study protocol to estimate relative case-severity of SARS-CoV-2 variants during periods when two variants were co-circulating.

COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness among healthcare workers: a hospital-based cohort study.

Objectives: Healthcare workers (HCWs) were the first to be prioritised for COVID-19 vaccination. This study aims to estimate the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) against SARS-CoV-2 symptomatic infection among HCWs in Portuguese hospitals.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Comparative complete scheme and booster effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (BA.1) and Delta (B.1.617.2) variants: A case-case study based on electronic health records.

Background: Information on vaccine effectiveness in a context of novel variants of concern (VOC) emergence is of key importance to inform public health policies. This study aimed to estimate a measure of comparative vaccine effectiveness between Omicron (BA.1) and Delta (B.

Comparative Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines in Preventing Infections and Disease Progression from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5 and BA.2, Portugal.

We estimated comparative primary and booster vaccine effectiveness (VE) of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5 and BA.2 lineages against infection and disease progression.

Spatiotemporal evolution of COVID-19 in Portugal's Mainland with self-organizing maps.

Background: Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) are an unsupervised learning clustering and dimensionality reduction algorithm capable of mapping an initial complex high-dimensional data set into a low-dimensional domain, such as a two-dimensional grid of neurons. In the reduced space, the original complex patterns and their interactions can be better visualized, interpreted and understood.

Methods: We use SOM to simultaneously couple the spatial and temporal domains of the COVID-19 evolution in the 278 municipalities of mainland Portugal during the first year of the pandemic.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccine effectiveness (second and first booster dose) against hospitalisation and death during Omicron BA.5 circulation: cohort study based on electronic health records, Portugal, May to July 2022.

We measured vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19-related severe outcomes in elderly people in Portugal between May and July 2022. In ≥ 80 year-olds, the second booster dose VE was 81% (95% CI: 75-85) and 82% (95% CI: 77-85), respectively, against COVID-19-related hospitalisation and death. The first booster dose VE was 63% (95% CI: 55-70) in ≥ 80 year-olds and 74% (95% CI: 66-80) in 60-79 year-olds against hospitalisation, and 63% (95% CI: 57-69) and 65% (95% CI: 54-74) against death.

COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths, among individuals aged ≥65 years in Portugal: A cohort study based on data-linkage of national registries February-September 2021.

Background: Using data from electronic health registries, this study intended to estimate the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in the population aged 65 years and more, against symptomatic infection, COVID-19-related hospitalizations, and deaths, overall and by time since complete vaccination for the period February to September 2021.

Methods: We established a cohort of individuals aged 65 and more years old, resident in Portugal mainland, using the National Health Service User number to link eight electronic health registries. Outcomes included were symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, COVID-19-related hospitalizations or deaths.

Rapid waning of protection induced by prior BA.1/BA.2 infection against BA.5 infection.

SARS-CoV-2 omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2 became dominant in many countries in early 2022.

Ongoing monkeypox virus outbreak, Portugal, 29 April to 23 May 2022.

Up to 27 May 2022, Portugal has detected 96 confirmed cases of monkeypox. We describe 27 confirmed cases (median age: 33 years (range: 22-51); all males), with an earliest symptom onset date of 29 April. Almost all cases (n = 25) live in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley health region.

[Neurosurgical Residency in Portugal: What is the National Panorama?].

Introduction: In Portugal, the number of neurosurgery residents has been rising steadily. However, there are no robust studies assessing the level of satisfaction and quality of the current training programs. The aim of this study was to describe and quantify the level of satisfaction about Neurosurgery residency in 2019, in Portugal.

mRNA vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19-related hospitalisations and deaths in older adults: a cohort study based on data linkage of national health registries in Portugal, February to August 2021.

Through deterministic data linkage of health registries, mRNA vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19-related hospitalisations and deaths was measured in 1,880,351 older adults. VE against hospitalisations was 94% (95% confidence interval (CI): 88-97) and 82% (95% CI: 72-89) for those 65-79 and ≥ 80 years old, with no evidence of waning 98 days after dose two. VE against mortality was 96% (95% CI: 92-98) and 81% (95% CI: 74-87) in these two age groups.

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 dissemination: insights from nationwide spike gene target failure (SGTF) and spike gene late detection (SGTL) data, Portugal, week 49 2020 to week 3 2021.

We show that the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.