Fernando Simón, one of the most iconic faces of the pandemic as director of the Coordination Center for Health and Emergencies (CCAES), has publicly reappeared in an act organized by the Ministry of Health to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Pandemic burst. He gave his last press conference to inform how pandemic evolved in July 2021.
In a conversation with Minister Mónica García, Simón has reflected on the measures that were taken from the government and the autonomous communities to deal with the deadly virus that threatened the world. The confinement was the most extreme of them and “maybe” could have made “softer in some circumstances,” Simon has admitted. “What was done was correct, but we have learned that the measures that were implemented could be better refined. It makes no sense, for example, that who is alone on the mountain was at home. So it was difficult to raise different actions than we did with the information we had, ”he has abounded.
Five years later, the CCAES director says that “never” defended political positions that were not aligned with the technical criteria, although he has recognized that “there were political proposals that were put on the table and we got among the technicians of the Ministry, of the communities, of the Carlos III Health Institute that would stop, change or postpone to moments where there would be no serious impact on health.”
With the perspective that takes time, he says he has received “much more recognition than criticism, although the latter, being minority, have much more visibility.” “There have been haters, people who hate, but I think they cannot direct or mediate our society. I am not going to leave – he said – to do my job. ”
What Simon has not clarified is whether he will appear to the contest to direct the new State Public Health Agency. The law that supports its creation is about to be endorsed in Congress, after obtaining the support of all the parliamentary groups except Vox, and the director of the CCAES has advanced that it would not accept to put themselves in charge of the organ if it were a finger choice. The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has revealed that her plans are to launch an open call with an evaluation committee that considers the candidacies.
“In the world there can be no lonely llaneros”
If something has changed in the world since 2020 is the balance of political powers. Now, in full rise of extreme right options, the United States or Argentina have announced that they leave the World Health Organization, a key multilateral body during the Coronavirus pandemic.
In an veiled allusion to these circumstances, Simon has loaded against the “lonely llaneros.” “There can be no strong and powerful that we consider, we do not live in a world that gets to our scope. We have to get this global world to work in a coordinated manner to solve problems such as those we live during the COVID-19, ”he said to add to the line followed that” we go if we have a strong economy with sick populations. ”
The Minister of Health, then without political responsibilities in the department, has thank Simon for “transmitting confidence” because it is “a great tool in public health.” “We did well when politics put behind science,” said Garcia, who was then the leader of the opposition to the Government of the Community of Madrid. Pandemia, according to the minister, “socialized vulnerability” but there was a “denial and individualistic counterrection” that today “encompasses all spheres.”
The day after the issuance of a documentary about the protocol of the Community of Madrid that deprived of transferring the people who lived in residences to the hospital and were dependent, Simon has cleared possible responsibilities of the Ministry of Health in what happened. “We directed the health actions of all ministries but the technical responsibility fell on the experts of each sector. I do not believe that the ministry should take care of things that did not know and that change a lot from some communities to others. You could not act in all microa, ”he defended.
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