"At this moment, there is no value already determined. We await the reports from the official entities that are carrying out the survey. This is a job that requires a lot of rigor and detail", said Mónica Seidi.

The governor was speaking to journalists after the first meeting of the working group created to assess the damage to the Hospital do Divino Espírito Santo (HDES), in São Miguel, which suffered a fire on the 4th and became inoperable.

According to the Regional Secretary for Health and Social Security, the Regional Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LREC) is carrying out a study of the building and will prepare a report, which will give "an assessment of the infrastructure itself".

Mónica Seidi explained that the fire in the largest health unit in the Azores, which forced the transfer of all patients who were hospitalized to various locations in the Azores, Madeira and the mainland, "affected the structure itself", especially in the area of "the electrical part of the hospital", which ended up "having an indirect effect on the entire structure".

According to the governor, it is very possible that everything related to the electrical part of the hospital will be replaced, since systems that are "30 years old and completely obsolete" are at stake.

"At this moment we are working on a provisional situation and possibly by the end of May the three transformer stations and the three electrical panels that will then supply all the other service panels will be implemented", she explained.

Mónica Seidi also pointed out that the fire also affected the "water pipes" and "ventilation systems", damage that will have to be "very well analyzed for the subsequent preliminary report that can provide more details on the extent of the damage".

"It is clear that it is urgent to produce this report, which complies with the items that must be complied with so that we can move forward and have the decree-law and everything that comes from the situation of public calamity in the short term" to "accelerate procedures", stressed the regional secretary for Health and Social Security.

Mónica Seidi stressed that, for now, it is not possible to proceed with a specific date for the works, reiterating that the objective is to design "a hospital for 20 to 30 years".

"It is necessary to rethink and reorganize the operation of the hospital and there we will certainly have the opportunity to grow, expand services and think about other ways of operating the car park, a complaint that users have revealed", she said.

Mónica Seidi recalled that, before the fire occurred, the Regional Government (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM) already had a survey of the intervention needs at the Ponta Delgada Hospital, a calculation that amounted to 70 million euros.

"And, perhaps, now we can be even more ambitious", she argued, indicating that, in addition to the working group created, "there is a whole set of situations" that will have to be addressed, perhaps by a multidisciplinary team.

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