Covid-19 patient Joao Cordeiro has beaten the virus and is about to go home, and his children also made quick recoveries from the disease. But his family’s battle with an epidemic that is raging across Portugal is far from over.

Cordeiro’s wife remains at the Cascais Hospital outside Lisbon, fighting for her life in the emergency unit a few floors below the room he was treated in.

The Cordeiros are among the nearly 250,000 people infected with the coronavirus in Portugal so far this month, and the country has the world’s highest seven-day average of daily cases and deaths per million.

Portugal’s epidemic has entered a “terrible” phase, Prime Minister Antonio Costa admitted, and the surge in cases has left hospitals on the brink of collapse.

Some are running out of beds, others’ oxygen supplies are dwindling and, with doctors and nurses also over-stretched, military medics have been drafted in from Germany to offer help.

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