The plan to control the flu through gradual use of the mask depending on the worsening of transmission has been left up in the air. The Public Health Commission in which the document was to be approved, where the general directors of all the territories are present, has ended without agreement, as confirmed by the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla. “The autonomous communities of the PP stop the document drafted by their own technicians to have for the first time a common action plan against the respiratory virus epidemic,” has written the number two of the Ministry in X.
The strategy emanated from the work of technicians from at least eight autonomous communities, the National Epidemiology Center and the Alert and Emergency Coordination Center (CCAES); and proposed four risk scenarios, from 0 to 3, with a progressive application of the use of the mask. A week earlier it had been approved in the alert presentation, where all the territories are represented.
However, at this Thursday’s meeting disagreements were put on the table that ended up postponing the vote due to the lack of agreement. The Ministry will call a new extraordinary meeting in a few days and will continue studying the text with the amendments sent by the communities.
Madrid, Castilla y León and the Canary Islands
The general director of Public Health of the Community of Madrid, Elena Andradas, has assured that her region, governed by the Popular Party, “is not the only one that does not agree with the document.” His argument is that “it suffers from a lack of technical judgment and a certain improvisation.” It is the main reason that the communities allude to to explain the disagreement: that the document is “immature.” Castilla y León has also actively expressed its rejection, as has the Canary Islands, according to sources present at the meeting.
The origin of the document was the communities’ complaint about the imposition of the mask by Health last year. The Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies summoned technicians from the communities who wished to do so to begin working on a joint strategy that resulted months later in the plan that was debated this Thursday. “It is not a Health plan. It is a document that was first worked on with eight communities, then it was approved in a presentation and today with the general directors, against their technicians, they have postponed their decision,” said Pedro Gullón, general director of Public Health, in X. Those eight regions are Asturias, Castilla y León, Catalunya, Galicia, Extremadura, Murcia, Comunitat Valenciana and La Rioja.
The representative of Madrid has also alluded, in statements to the press when the meeting had not yet ended, that “there is no information that can be comparable between the communities and that allows us to make a risk assessment to implement measures simultaneously. ”.
Without unitary thresholds
The objective of the plan is to “guarantee coordination between the territories” in autumn and winter, when the circulation of Covid-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) intensifies. A tool, similar to the Covid-19 traffic lights, to act gradually as the incidence increases and avoid saturation of hospitals with the difference that it is made up of recommendations – not obligations – and that the thresholds to go from one scenario to another are not fixed at the national level. They will depend on the communities, which will have to calculate them through a series of key indicators according to their reality (there are territories that monitor more precisely and others less), such as incidence, ICU occupancy or detection in Primary Care, according to sources close to the process.
Although the best prevention measure is to get vaccinated, Health recalled, the idea of this pioneering plan is to overcome the “chaos” that was experienced last year and that ended with the imposition of the mask in almost all territories by Health when the transmission was at the peak. “It’s about acting before, not when the curve is rising exponentially because that can cause complications,” said the minister of the sector, Mónica García, a few days ago. Last season, “very intense flu activity” was recorded: there were almost 450 cases of flu per 100,000 inhabitants and a peak of 16.4 hospitalizations in the first week of January.
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