Spanish Health Minister Mónica García has said that she had received a commitment from the regions to support the common protocol for action against influenza on 3 December, which reinstates, among other measures, the mandatory use of face masks in hospitals at maximum risk. At a press conference following the Interterritorial Council meeting, the minister expressed her confidence that the centre right opposition Partido Popular councillors ‘will not once again put their political interests above the health of the population this year,’ as they did last season when they vetoed the common plan agreed upon by the Ministry’s experts and the regions, she said.
The Public Health Commission will give its final verdict at its meeting on 3 December on the protocol, which is essentially the same as the one drawn up for last season and to which minor modifications have been made in recent months at the request of the communities, for example in terms of methodology, which do not affect the meaning of the measures.
It thus maintains, for example, the gradual tightening of the use of masks in healthcare and social care settings, which will go from being recommended to mandatory at the highest levels of risk, something that the minister has strongly defended: ‘I’m very sorry, but from now on, anyone with cold symptoms should responsibly wear a mask.’
‘This is very, very simple, and I will explain it as minister: when you arrive at a healthcare centre, you put on your mask; when you leave the healthcare centre, you take it off, and in this way you protect patients, you protect professionals and you protect yourself,’ she summarised. However, she wanted to clarify that the protocol is flexible, depending on the epidemiological situation in each region, so she wanted to make it clear that ‘the use of masks will be a recommendation or an obligation depending on the situation in each region.’
‘If we are in a high-risk scenario, in which masks, according to the protocol, must be mandatory, for example, to go to health centres, hospitals or nursing homes, or for healthcare professionals, I understand that the regions will not refuse to follow this protocol,’ she said. In any case, this is a protocol that some regions have already implemented, such as Aragon, which recently opened the door to mandatory masks in its health centres.
The Department of Health believes that now is the time to establish this common plan before the flu curve, which has already entered the epidemic phase, and other respiratory viruses in circulation - COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus - continue to rise and end up collapsing the system as happens every winter. This is even more important given that the season has arrived earlier than in other years and appears to be more intense than previous ones: ‘It is urgent and important, given that the flu epidemic has arrived early, that we work together to try to minimise its effects,’ she stressed.
However, she acknowledged that ‘history tells us that hospitals are never prepared’ for an increase in infections. ‘The system is never prepared for an epidemic that we have not acted on; this is a key lesson from the pandemic.’ Therefore, ‘the sooner we act and the sooner we put containment measures in place, the fewer admissions and the less our healthcare system will be overwhelmed or saturated,’ she stressed.