Portugal has always had one of the highest rates of non-urgent patients using NHS urgencies - by non-urgent, I mean blue and green patients, according to Manchester-Triage-System.

In March, when the coronavirus pandemic started, the overall usage of hospital urgencies in Portugal hit a historic low, having increased again by July. But when analysing the NHS data by kind of patient, I’ve found out that the rate of non-urgent patients kept the same - meaning that it wasn’t the fact that people that didn’t need to use a hospital emergency stopped using it, but that it was just the total number that got low - something that could explain the high mortality rates not associated with covid-19 in the country.

But when the number increased, I’ve found out that it was because non-urgent patients were using them again.