Home » Health » Spain wants to change its strategy in the face of the virus February 2, 2022

Other regions such as the Basque Country or Navarre, as well as Andalusia and Valencia, have preferred to maintain the pass for at least a few more weeks. But Cantabria has already given up on it. Local authorities consider that its implementation has had motivating effects on the vaccination of young people, but believe that it has no impact on reducing the high transmission of Omicron indoors.

It is difficult to navigate the maze of regulations in the face of the pandemic in Spain. The framework set at the national level is indeed limited to a few general principles, including the obligation to wear a mask, in particular, and each region is then free to adopt its own management. This has notably allowed Madrid, or the regions of Castile and Leon and Castile-La Mancha to choose to avoid pass or time restrictions.

“Sentinel Doctors”

But today, for the Spanish government, the debate is elsewhere. The peak of contagions was reached ten days ago and the pressure on the hospital system is beginning to decrease, with a rate of Covid patients falling to 15%.

At a time when it looks like the virus will grant a truce, the Ministry of Health is preparing the ground for a global change of strategy in the face of the next upsurge of the pandemic with the establishment of a new contagion surveillance system , on the model of that which is applied against the flu.

“It is a question of moving from a health crisis management model to an epidemic control model”, describes Salvador Tranche Iparraguirre, president of the Spanish Society of Family Doctors. “What’s the point of testing everyone and clogging up health centers, when the vast majority of people remain asymptomatic, it’s better to focus on those who really need it,” he insists.

The less aggressive variant, the high vaccination coverage and the treatments that will soon be on the market encourage the application of a new surveillance model, he explains. “It would be a question of working, as for the flu, from statistical evaluations, relying on a network of sentinel doctors who serve as benchmarks to assess the progress of the virus. »

This change of direction is of course greeted with reluctance, considered premature by some epidemiologists who fear the appearance of new, more aggressive variants. But Madrid’s idea is precisely to anticipate and open the debate at European level, so that this wave is the last to have been managed according to the indicators put in place at the start of the pandemic.