In the first five months of 2022 alone, Social Security provided more than two million sickness benefits -2,016,848 is the exact figure-, which represents an increase of 82% compared to the same period last year, in which 1,104,222 sick leaves were paid. . Converted to euros, it means that between January and May the State spent 627 million euros on these installments, 40.9% more than in the same period of 2021, in which 445 million euros were channeled for the same purpose.
The figures, registered by the Office of Strategy and Planning of the Ministry of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, are advanced this Friday by Público and refer to the benefits granted for sickness subsidy, professional sickness subsidy, tuberculosis subsidy, provisional granting sickness benefit, sick leave due to contagion and also the provision for prophylactic isolation by SARS-CoV-2, this last element will help explain the escalation of sick leaves granted, which coincides with the expansion of the Ómicron variant in Portugal, less serious but much more transmittable.
In May of this year alone, the month on the last day of which the positive cases in Portugal skyrocketed to 50,918 (435 new infections were registered on the same day in 2021), 333,037 casualties due to illness were attributed, 86% more than in the same period of the previous year. .
Source: Observadora
