The ministry approves the use of the Novavax vaccine, which will be used in people allergic to the other formulas
Those infected by covid-19 must continue to keep a seven-day quarantine. The members of the Public Health Commission decided this Tuesday to maintain this period of isolation until their next meeting, waiting for new reports to support a measure that generates discrepancies. Some communities and business associations were in favor of reducing this period, which with the explosion of omicron infections, has caused a large number of job losses and has slowed down the production of companies. But on the other hand, experts call for caution before making this decision.
Currently, the isolation of positives lasts seven days and a positive test is not required to return to work, except for health workers or residence workers. Close contacts of an infected person who are not vaccinated must also quarantine for a week, while vaccinated contacts are exempt if they do not develop symptoms.
The professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Pedro Gullón, cites a study by the Cantabria Public Health Observatory that concludes that only 2% of omicron infections occur after the fifth day of infection. “In any case, when the incidence is falling like now, a reduction in quarantines has less impact,” he says. “The quarantine should not be modified below seven days. The risk that a person is still capable of infecting less than those days is still real, ”explains, for his part, the Public Health expert José Martínez Olmos.
In just a month and a half, ómicron has caused five million infections, almost half of those recorded since the start of the pandemic by official statistics. But the real cases are many more, since a large part of the infections detected in home antigen tests have not been notified to the health surveillance networks. Yesterday, the incidence of the coronavirus fell another 104 points and stood at 1,893 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In addition, the Carolina Darias department reported 43,831 infections and 361 deaths.
At its meeting this Tuesday, the Public Health Commission also approved the 11th update of the Vaccination Strategy to include the Novavax vaccine, the fifth available in Spain (approved by the EMA on December 20). Novavax will be used in people who have received incomplete vaccination due to allergies to some of the components of the other available vaccines. In August 2021, the Council of Ministers approved the acquisition of 2,284,085 doses of Novavax, which arrived in Spain between November and January and will be used in this group.