Andalusia says 'no' to the mandatory use of masks in health centers, social health centers and pharmacies. Despite the criteria of the Ministry of Health, which advocates imposing face masks again in certain spaces given the peak in respiratory virus infections in recent weeks, the regional Executive considers that the existing recommendation in force in the region since July 2023 is sufficient. .
It is a decision that cannot be based "on haste," Jorge del Diego, director of Public Health and Pharmaceutical Regulation of the Board, told Canal Sur Radio, but rather it must be a measure "with rationale behind it." For his part, the Minister of the Presidency, Antonio Sanz, has insisted that it is the "criterion of experts and professionals" that must be taken into account.
And the drops in temperatures and meetings in closed or poorly ventilated places have increased the number of people who have been infected with the flu, covid or syncytial virus in Spain, although in Andalusia the average number of cases is 500 per 100,000 inhabitants. , is below the country's rate, which stands at 1,100 cases, according to data provided by the Ministry of Health, from which it was pointed out that Andalusian hospital centers are far from collapsing due to this situation.
For her part, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, today proposes to the communities the return to the mandatory nature of the mask in health and socio-health centers, within the extraordinary Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS) that is celebrated with the aim of "unifying criteria" for addressing "the peaks of respiratory viruses" that have occurred in recent days in Spain.
The incidence of flu that is occurring in recent days "is something to worry about" since "we are at higher levels of flu than in recent years," said García, who pointed out that the problem is not so much the infections as the health collapse.
At the expense of knowing the details of the extraordinary meeting of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the counselor of the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, Antonio Sanz, has insisted this morning on the need for the criteria of the specialists to be the one that prevails in the adoption of any measure of this nature. "We believe that we should always be guided by the judgment of experts and professionals," he said.
"Andalusia has had its own regulations since July, with which we have always taken the initiative to recommend the use of masks, and now we are going to wait for the criteria and proposal of the Ministry of Health, but, in any case, What we will demand is that these decisions are always made with the criteria of experts and professionals, who are the ones who have to convey what the proposals are," he insisted.
In the opinion of the director of Public Health and Pharmaceutical Regulation of the Government of Andalusia, Jorge del Diego, "we must try to take the most harmonious and coordinated measure possible between all the autonomous communities, understanding that the decision to make the use of of masks cannot be an isolated decision, based on haste, but rather it has to have a rationale behind it," he indicated.
For the general director, "it must be protocolized, that is, at what levels we are going to start, what indicators we are going to have to meet to understand that from here on we have to make it mandatory, in an in-hospital environment or not, fully understanding where it is located. causes the main contagion of the flu and what we want to avoid if we make it mandatory within hospitals. "Therefore, we are going to harmonize it and we are going to have a clear protocol of when it has to be done, so that the population does not see that this is done at the drop of a hat," Del Diego pointed out.
It was on July 13, 2023, once the Covid pandemic was coming to an end, when Andalusia decreed an instruction recommending the use of masks in health centers and hospitals based on different criteria. "It is very clear who and where and under what circumstances this mask should be used," insists del Diego, who points out that the transmission of the flu is community-based and the use of the mask will not prevent it from existing within hospitals. That is to say, the contagion occurs in “out-of-hospital environments” and, in that sense, the only purpose of using face masks in healthcare spaces is to prevent the contagion of vulnerable people.
If a worker becomes infected with one of these viruses and cannot attend his job, he must go to the doctor to obtain sick leave to justify his absence. This situation also contributes to the collapse in health centers, for which the Minister of Health wants to find a solution.
It is today that it will also be proposed, and is already being studied, "the self-justification of three-day sick leave, for those who have a mild illness," said Mónica García in an interview on Onda Cero.
