The Interterritorial will discuss how to ease the mandatory nature of masks in healthcare settings

Although it is not explicitly marked as such on the agenda, the Interterritorial Council Plenary session scheduled for this Friday will discuss how the possible decision to withdraw or ease the mandatory nature of masks in health and social health environments is finally articulated.. This is an issue that, in Spain, goes back a long way, since several 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, José Miñones, during an interview on Radio Nacional. Miñones stressed that the last decision on this matter corresponds to the technicians and experts. “You have to do it rigorously, you have to do it seriously,” he said, adding that it will be the experts who will guide the withdrawal process; that is, if it is done “prolongedly, definitively or in stages”.

However, as this newspaper has been able to learn, 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, dated for Friday from 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 matter and there were different positions between some regions; For this reason, there are autonomies 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, must take into account the “vulnerable environments” and those in which 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

Miñones' 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, he recalled that his 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”, pointed out Ruiz Escudero, who added that “it is a disgrace” that the ministry uses this issue “when the epidemiological and care situation is exactly the same as it was 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 They continue to produce government agreements and it is more than likely that several will change their political color.

Moreover, it is very possible that several regional councilors attend 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 to the mandatory nature of masks in health settings 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: Has the political analysis and corresponding decisions on this issue taken too long? 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 settings: Was it still necessary as a measure to combat the transmission of the virus? 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 neighboring countries 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.