Today, the Councilor for the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, Antonio Sanz, described the “imposition” of the mandatory use of masks in hospitals and health centers by the Ministry of Health as not very rigorous and not at all serious. The decision, adopted without the consensus of the autonomous communities, was communicated yesterday within the framework of an extraordinary plenary session of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, where Minister Mónica García stated that the State is covered by article 65 of the cohesion law. and quality of the National Health System, which allows the declaration of coordinated actions in public health, to “give legal coverage to communities that have already imposed masks in their health centers”, such as Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Murcia.
The region governed by the popular Juanma Moreno de facto opposed this measure, emphasizing that, in Andalusia, since June 2013, there has been an instruction recommending the use of face masks in certain public spaces. In addition, the counselor of the branch, Catalina García, who attended the meeting electronically, attacked the forms, since, as she expressed, these decisions must be made first in the Alerts Presentation and in the Public Health Commission, where they are prepared. a document that establishes levels of alerts or indicators, among others, to later be endorsed by the Interterritorial Council.
At the moment, and within a period of 48 hours, the different territories can make objections to this decision.
The State’s decision on the return to the mask, given the rebound in respiratory virus infections that are collapsing health centers and hospitals in some autonomous communities, is not without controversy. On the one hand, there are communities that consider that this measure generates unnecessary alarm among the population. They already have High Frequency Plans that are activated during the time of resurgence of these infections, and those who, from within the health field, endorse the obligation. of its use.
Andalusia, according to data provided by the Junta de Andalucía, is not in a critical situation: if there are regions that have a contagion rate of 1,100-1,700 per 100,000 inhabitants, in the south the figure is 500, although increasing. . For this reason, the regional Executive considers that a simple recommendation and the responsible use of the mask would be enough, and considers that things from the Sánchez Government are being done in an “improvised” way.
Things “cannot be done” the way she is doing them, declared the Presidency advisor, who points out that these types of decisions should be based on technical and “non-political” criteria, and it is not a matter of “social networks” either. “from the minister.
“The minister’s way of working is very unserious,” according to the Andalusian counselor, who has insisted on denouncing the “lack of dialogue and improvisation.”
It is not an occurrence, the Minister of Health responded today. Mónica García insists that the measure “is endorsed by scientific societies and science, it is the best to contain a moment of peak flu that in the last week has skyrocketed and has strained the health system.” “The ministry is not going to assume that after a pandemic we will once again have the same images of tension in healthcare as in the pandemic with a flu that we know when and how it arrives and we have information,” he reasoned.
Furthermore, he has stressed that the citizens themselves, who what they need is for “criteria to be unified”, are already applying the measure of wearing a mask “despite the fact that there is no obligation because it is common sense. It has to do with what We have learned in the pandemic.
Although yesterday the Minister of Health announced that they were studying the option that a patient affected with some type of respiratory virus could make a responsible declaration that would serve as proof to be absent from their job, she later went on to detail that they would need to reach an agreement with employers and unions to find a way in which this could be carried out. The formula is still up in the air, but it has been criticized by Sanz, who has stated that we are facing “another improvisation of headlines.” “You should be a little more cautious,” according to Sanz, remembering that a leave is an administrative act that has to be endorsed by a doctor.
He has criticized that the minister launched this proposal and now says that she has to negotiate it with businessmen and unions: “It is an unserious way of doing politics; more seriousness and rigor and less arrogance are needed.”
