Health and the CCAA agree that masks are no longer mandatory in the health field and pharmacies

The Interterritorial Health Council has supported this Friday the definitive withdrawal of the mandatory nature of masks in health centers, hospitals and pharmacies, so their widespread use in these centers ends, but it is recommended when there are symptoms of respiratory infection.

The Minister of Health, José Miñones, has reached an agreement with the sector's advisers in the Interterritorial Health Council, a claim put forward weeks ago by several communities, including Madrid, which since April asked to eliminate the mask inside hospitals, pharmacies and day centers.

In this way, Spain says goodbye to more than 1,140 days of mandatory use of the mask in some area, waiting for the Council of Ministers to approve, foreseeably next week, the royal decree that will include the new regulation, already more flexible in terms of related to health and socio-health environments.

Health and the communities aim to maintain the obligation in critical and vulnerable hospital settings, that is, in areas such as operating rooms, intensive care units and where there are immunocompromised patients. The minister himself announced last week that the idea was to remove the masks in places that are still mandatory — health centers, social health centers and pharmacies — and settled: “We are closer to it being a recommended rather than mandatory use”.

Spain put an end to the mandatory mask on public transport last February, at a time when the covid-19 records, as now, were close to their lowest figures, although it will continue to be advisable in these places for people vulnerable or in the presence of symptoms of respiratory infection.

The reform of the royal decree of April 2022 that regulates the use of face masks was “one more step”, in the words of Miñones's predecessor, Carolina Darias, in the response that Spain was giving to the epidemiological situation throughout the pandemic.. It was thus withdrawn on trains, planes, buses or subways, where they were imperative since May 4, 2020, as well as health establishments such as orthopedics, opticians and audioprosthesis centers, where it remained mandatory in April last year when removed from interiors.