The time has apparently come for Sánchez to monitor the pandemic differently than before.
(Photo: dpa)
Madrid The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes that half of the EU population will be infected with the coronavirus in the next six to eight weeks. The infections are currently exploding in numerous nations.
Spain is therefore working on a new approach on how Europe should deal with the pandemic in the future. The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in an interview with the radio station Cadena SER that the time may have come for other methods of surveillance. “We have the prerequisites to gradually and cautiously open the debate on a technical and European level and to evaluate the development of this disease using different parameters than before,” said Sanchez.
He thus confirmed a report in the daily newspaper “El País”, according to which his government no longer wants to record the development of the pandemic on a case-by-case basis, but wants to have it monitored by general practitioners, health centers and hospitals at representative points across the country. The development of the flu is monitored in a similar way. According to Sánchez, the Spanish government has been working on such a plan for weeks.
According to “El País”, the planning is now in the final phase. Five autonomous Spanish regions have already carried out pilot tests in the new type of surveillance. This week, officials from emergency and epidemiology centers wanted to meet to discuss the plan. However, it should not be implemented before the end of the currently ongoing sixth corona wave in Spain.
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The debate is picking up speed in Spain. At the weekend, the Spanish Society for Family Medicine, the largest scientific association in Spain, advocated a return to normal in an editorial on its website. The virus variant Omikron leads to numerous infections, but in combination with the vaccinations leads to comparatively few severe cases.
“Governments should focus their efforts on protecting those most at risk rather than trying – presumably with little success – to curb the circulation of the virus in the population,” the article said. “The goal should be to treat Covid the way we do with the flu: clinical diagnosis and general recommendations for self-treatment and prevention of infections in people at risk, with healthcare reserved for those who need it because of their symptoms or exposure . “
However, not all experts share this opinion. “It’s still too early,” says Miguel Ángel Royo, President of the Madrid Public Health Association, to Handelsblatt. “There are still many hospital admissions and deaths, and we still don’t know how serious Omikron is.”
Incidence in the country currently at 1460
Although Spain has one of the highest vaccination rates in the EU, the hospitals are currently also filling up: 13 percent of hospital beds are occupied by Covid patients and 24 percent of intensive care beds. The end of the sixth wave is not yet in sight.
The contact points for infected people – comparable to the German family doctor system – are overflowing and long queues are formed. Antigen tests were sold out at Christmas. According to the Spanish government, the seven-day incidence is currently 1460 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. This means that Spain is not even the country with the most infected people per inhabitant in Europe – according to the platform ‘our world in data’, six countries have an even higher rate, including France, Italy, Denmark and Greece.
They all face the same problem: the many cases can hardly be registered, let alone tracing the contacts of the infected. Spain has already started to relax the regulations: For example, direct contacts with those who have tested positive no longer have to do a corona test as long as they have no symptoms.
More: Omikron is racing from record to record – this is how Europe’s governments are trying to slow the spread