Portugal hospitals under pressure with virus surge

Ambulances waiting to deliver COVID-19 patients queued outside hospital emergency departments on Friday as Portugal's COVID-19 surge continued unabated, adding a new record of daily deaths for the fifth day in a row.

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and patients in intensive care also reached new highs over the previous 24 hours, placing the public health system under severe strain, health authorities said.

Authorities reported 234 deaths, bringing the country's total to 9,920.

Hospitals added another 149 COVID-19 patients to their wards, with another 13 in ICUs. Hospitals are on average around 90% full.

At Lisbon's Santa Maria Hospital, the capital's largest, more than a dozen ambulances queued along an approach road, waiting to hand over their COVID-19 patients to medics.

At some hospitals, ambulance drivers have complained about waiting for hours.

At Santa Maria, the hospital's head of the COVID-19 emergency response, Anabela Oliveira, said staff were working under "brutal pressure".

She said the hospital has also been receiving overflow patients from other hospitals in the region.

"The public health service will collapse if these numbers keep coming, if we remain under this pressure," she told reporters outside the hospital. "This is the most critical moment of the pandemic."

Daniel Ferro, chairman of Santa Maria Hospital board, said doctors were checking the needs of patients held in the ambulances, to see whether they were urgent cases, and that the hospital was close to its limit.

"It doesn't mean the hospital doesn't have the capacity in terms of hospitalization and intensive care, we still have that capacity but it is very close to its limit," Ferro said.

The almost 14,000 officially reported new cases in Portugal was the second highest during the pandemic.

Portugal has the highest seven-day average rate in the world of new cases per 100,000 population and the highest rate of new deaths, according to data collated through Thursday by Johns Hopkins University.

Portugal's government blames the surge on the appearance of a more contagious variant first identified in southeast England.

As a result, it is stopping flights to and from the United Kingdom from Saturday.