The Minister of Health, Mónica García, indicated this Friday that masks are one of the recommendations under study to face the next season of respiratory viruses and hoped “not to have to intervene” like last year, because she is sure that all communities will respect them.
Details of the document on which the technicians are working with common measures for action and prevention of respiratory viruses We will find out on October 17while the Public Health Commission must meet to close it, explained García at the end of the Interterritorial Council.
For now, as has been argued, the document they are preparing will include a series of indicators that will allow characterize the epidemiological situation based on transmission risk, severity, incidence rate and rate of hospitalization, intensive care admission or death; On this basis, scenarios will be developed to which a series of recommendations will be linked to reduce the ravages of infections.
Something that It was already done with covid-19and that now the Ministry has made a pioneering promotion with this year’s flu epidemic “so that the bull does not catch us and we do not have to take measures” in the middle of the peak as happened l Last year, when Health ended up imposing masks in health centers in the midst of an increasing wave of cases.
In this sense, he recalled “the complications” that it took to make this measure effective across the entire territory. in Health, consider as “basic”. “We think we can act sooner and that’s why “we need this document”he pointed out.
“Let us hope that it comes true because I believe that it is not possible to think that a jointly developed document will not be realized; let us hope that we of the ministry, we do not need to intervene”, The minister decided when asked about the possibility that these recommendations could become obligations in the event of non-compliance.
The intention is to prevent these situations and that “it is not necessarily the Ministry of Health which must tell communities what they must do”. García aspired to be able to debate this Friday with the councilors the proposals of his technical teams from the different communities; However, only Alejandro Vázquez, from Castilla y León, intervened to “highlight that there will be a lot of heterogeneity” in the situations.
However, he insisted on the fact that “the tools and measures we have against respiratory viruses are the measures we have: vaccination, hygiene measures, masks and containment measures. And that’s how it is,” he concluded.
