2023-06-23 10:55:50
MANUEL BUSTELO
Madrid
Updated Friday, June 23, 2023 – 10:55
In the meeting between Health and the autonomous communities, scheduled for this Friday, they will delve into how to apply the measure and in what scenarios it should be maintained.
A woman is treated in a pharmacy. Europa PressCovid-19 Experts defend the end of masks in health centers and Health talks about “trying to use them as a general rule” Covid Fernando Simn believes that the mask will “soon” stop being mandatory in pharmacies and “do not last too long” in health centers
Although it is not explicitly marked as such on the agenda, the plenary session of the Inter-territorial Council scheduled for this Friday will discuss How the possible decision to withdraw or soften the mandatory nature of masks is finally articulated in health and social health settings. This is an issue that, in Spain, has come a long way, since various voices have been requesting for some time that the measure against covid-19 be adapted to the health and care reality derived from the SARS-CoV-2 crisis.
The celebration of this meeting between Health and the regional officials was announced less than a week ago by the Minister of Health, Her Miones, during an interview on National Radio. Miones stressed that the last decision on this issue corresponds to technicians and experts. “You have to do it rigorously, you have to do it seriously,” he pointed out, adding that the experts will guide the withdrawal process; that is, if it is done “prolongedly, definitively or in stages”.
However, as this newspaper has learned, There are autonomies that question this, since it has not yet been announced that a meeting of the Public Health Commission will be held before this Interterritorial meeting, scheduled for Friday starting at 5:00 p.m. As this newspaper has already published, in the previous meetings of this commission, held before the regional elections of 28-M, there was no quorum on this issue and there were different positions among some regions; For this reason, there are autonomous regions that consider it necessary for the members of the commission to meet again to approach positions and structure how the process of softening or withdrawing the measure should be carried out.
Said proposals, according to sources close to the Interterritorial Council, point to this medium, must take into account “vulnerable environments” and those in which the majority of the chronic, elderly and polymedicated population lives, as is the case of residences. In them, as they point out, said obligation should be maintained; while in other environments where it is now mandatory to wear a mask, it should be softened, following the criteria that already existed before the arrival of the pandemic.
An “electoralist” measure
Miones’s announcement to convene the Interterritorial Council and address this issue in it generated reactions as soon as it occurred. One of them was that of the acting Minister of Health of Madrid, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, who pointed out that it is an “electoralist” proposal. In fact, she recalled that her region has been asking for months to “review the strategy” against covid-19 thinking about “the vulnerability of people and people with active infection.”
“As of today there is no further progress, which responds to something that we have seen during all these years, which is how the Ministry of Health is going to use a public health measure with an electoral character, as it has always done”, Ruiz Escudero pointed out, who added that “it is a disgrace” that the ministry uses this matter “when the epidemiological and healthcare situation is exactly the same as we experienced four months ago“.
“If that decision is made, it is welcome, but of course the electoral nature that the Ministry of Health uses for all its measures is sometimes embarrassing,” he concluded.
The celebration of this Interterritorial Council also takes place in a complex political scenario, not only because of the general elections in barely a month, but also because in the communities where regional elections have just been held, the councilors are still in office, in many of them. They continue to produce government agreements and it is more than likely that several will change their political color.
Furthermore, it is quite possible that Several regional councilors attended this meeting of the Interterritorial Council, not only in office, but also as one of their last institutional acts in office.
Should this issue have been addressed earlier?
The approach of the mandatory nature of masks in health environments in this Interterritorial Council, in the second half of June and several weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to lift the international emergency due to covid, also raises another question: Political analysis and the corresponding decisions on this issue have taken too long. question? And it is that, at the beginning of last May, this newspaper collected the unknowns that investigations and experts launched around the debate generated in Spain about maintaining the mandatory nature of the mask in health environments: It continued to be necessary as a measure to combat the transmission of SARS -CoV-2? Would it be appropriate to remove the obligation or soften the measure? Is there evidence to support these decisions?
These questions arose after other countries around us had decided to ease this obligation and after studies were published that raised doubts about the impact of the measure.
Whether it is late or not, everything indicates that a decision will come out of the meeting this Friday between Health and the autonomous communities that could modify the Royal Decree published in the Official State Gazette on February 8 and in which the health environments are specified. and socio-sanitary in which the use of the mask is still mandatory.
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