Although many people no longer remember and have to buy an emergency face mask in order to access a clinic or a nursing home, Spain is one of the few countries that maintains the obligation to wear face masks in health facilities. a dregs of the pandemic which is also about to disappear. The Minister of Health, José Miñones, announced this Friday that at the end of the month will convene the communities to an Interterritorial Health Council in which the end of the obligation will be discussed.
The minister has predicted that Spain is “closer to that day& rdquor; in which the use of masks in health centers will be “recommended” and not “mandatory & rdquor; but, for the moment, it has not announced when or how it will take place. As he has argued in an interview on RNE, “it must be done rigorously, it must be done seriously, this is not about making the decision by the Minister of Health or even the team of the Minister of Health, this is something that is that to debatethat you have to talk to the experts […] and dialogue with the autonomous communities & rdquor ;.
Miñones has specified that, like the rest of the decisions regarding the pandemic, they will be the experts of the report of alerts and the Public Health Commission who guide the withdrawal process, whether it is done “prolongedly, permanently or in a phased manner & rdquor ;. It is also not clear if the end of the obligation will reach all health spaces or will remain in some, such as the residences. “We could think about the day centers or where our parents, grandparents and elders are and whether it should be removed there or not,” she reflected.
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The director of the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Center, Fernando Simón, already announced at the end of April that the masks would leave “soon & rdquor; to be mandatory in the pharmacyhospitals or health centers and, since then, communities such as Madrid or Catalonia have spoken in favor of the withdrawal of the obligation.
His position has been influenced by the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted the international emergency due to the pandemic that was decreed in 2020 at the beginning of May. Although the international organization recommends, however, maintaining the use of masks to avoid transmission in health centers, at least by professionals or in the most vulnerable patients.
The decision, therefore, is not unanimous among epidemiologists. Supporters of the withdrawal brandish a recent study carried out in the United Kingdom that concludes that the requirement to wear masks in hospitals, in the current situation, has “little impact” in reducing the transmission of coronavirus.
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Likewise, eight members of prestigious research centers Americans They have signed an article in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’ magazine that maintains that masks were very useful when immunity was limited but now, thanks to the spread of vaccination, the time has come to manage covid like other endemic viruses and end the universal use of masks in health centers.
The decision adopted by the Spanish Government, on whether to withdraw it in all health spaces and for all users, will therefore be known at the end of this month.