The Balearic Minister for Health, Patricia Gómez, warned today that it is still “too early”, as “most experts” agree, to consider removing mask indoors, and attributed the recent increase in Covid cases to the relaxation of restrictions.
“There are different factors that cause the number of infections to increase, but the relaxation of the measures in general means that we are all relaxing and not maintaining the measures we used to, which is why we still insist on the need to maintain safety, especially indoors,” said the minister.
She said that the health department “is very aware” of the rise in cases and is investigating whether it is a “one-off trend or not”, and she stressed that “the pandemic is not over yet”.
However, she said that for the moment “hospitals are no longer under pressure and intensive care levels remain moderate, allowing other medical procedures to be resumed”.
The minister also explained that most of the current cases are due to the omicron subvariant, “which is more contagious” and accounts for 70 percent of the new cases.
The remaining 30 percent are associated with the original omicron strain.