The second of March 2021 marked one year of the pandemic in Portugal. The first two cases of Covid appeared in Porto, one at Santo António Hospital and another at São João Hospital. Almost 805 thousand cases of the disease have been registered so far, and 16,351 deaths. In this pandemic year, more than 720,000 people have recovered from the disease.

Throughout this year, Portugal was forced to strengthen the National Health System, and hospitals underwent moments of rupture in hospitalizations. The land borders with Spain were closed and there were also restrictions on air traffic. All Portuguese people experienced very restricted lockdown measures.

Right now, we are experiencing the twelfth state of emergency, reason enough for the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to leave a message  of hope to the Portuguese - “As history and science have taught us, the pandemic will, inevitably and fortunately, end one day. The hope of making that day closer lies, to a large extent, in mass vaccination, currently hampered by the shortage of vaccine delivery by the producers.”

A year later and still a long way from envisioning group immunity, we want to attain it globally. In Portugal, more than 860 thousand doses of vaccines have been administered, a process that started on 27 December 2020. But how long until we  achieve group immunity within the country? When will the borders open up? When will the world become free from this deadly virus? These are questions that a year later have not yet been answered.