Experts support the removal of the mask indoors because covid-19 has become, for the most part, a mild disease. “It is appropriate to do so, but with some caveats: it is a priority to remove them in schools, where infections are mild or asymptomatic, and indoors where there are healthy adults. But it is essential to keep them for vulnerable people”, points out José Manuel Cisneros, the president of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (Seimc).
Seimc calls for the use of masks to be maintained in hospitals, social and healthcare centres and nursing homes, where there are people who are less protected by the vaccine and can become seriously ill.”The mask has been an extraordinary public health benefit brought about by the anticovid measures and should be maintained,” adds Cisneros. Along with him, epidemiologists such as Antoni Trilla, Head of Preventive Medicine at Hospital ClÃnic, or infectologists such as Benito Almirante, Head of Infectious Diseases at Vall d’Hebron, also believe that it is time to remove the mask from indoors. Trilla supports Catalunya’s proposal: remove the mask from indoors after it has been removed from all classrooms.
However, the measure is rejected by the president of the immunologists, Marcos López Hoyos, who pointed out this Wednesday that, with an incidence of around 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it is “premature” to do away with the protective garment.
Masks – An icon of the pandemic
Be that as it may, Spain has entered the countdown to the end of the most pandemic’s most iconic garment, banished forever or at least stop being used in certain interiors and by certain groups. The clock started ticking when on February 21 Pedro Sánchez, just 11 days after the protection was no longer mandatory outdoors, announced that “sooner rather than later” the mask would no longer be necessary indoors. A promise he reiterated last weekend at the PSOE federal committee.
However, on Tuesday, in an informal conversation with journalists during the flight to Latvia, he pointed out that it is still necessary to keep an eye on the evolution of the curve given the upturn that some communities have experienced. He also said that it remains to be seen whether the alert committee, which brings together experts, advises that it should be withdrawn first in schools, as pediatricians have requested, or whether it should be done in a more generic way, reports Juanma Romero.
The date, according to these statements, seems to still be unclear. However, the Community of Madrid has indicated that it will ask this Wednesday, in the preparatory meeting prior to the meeting to be held tomorrow by the Ministry of Health and the communities in Zaragoza, that masks be abolished indoors except in residences, hospitals and public transport. However, this issue is not on the agenda, which is devoted mainly to the monitoring system, which could be made more flexible given the lower levels of covid, thanks to the wide vaccination coverage.
Easter week
The first announcement by Sánchez on the possibility of relaxing the use of masks indoors was made when the infection rate was plummeting but now has slowed down and there has been a small rebound in some communities, which coincides with a progressive spread of the BA.2 subvariant, the so-called stealthy omicron, which is more transmissible and already accounts for 30% of infections in Catalonia or Madrid.
For this reason, some epidemiologists believe that Spain should wait until it is below 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, something which could happen around Easter, if cases continues to fall. In other countries, on the other hand, there will not be such a long wait and in France it will cease to be mandatory in businesses on March 14, an iconic date that coincides with the second anniversary of the beginning of containment in Spain.
However, Cisneros, from the Seimc, believes that epidemiological indicators (Rt, incidence, positivity…) “no longer have to be at the top of the list of infection” because covid-19 is no longer the same disease as before. “There are still infections, but it is important that we treat it as what it is now: snot. There is no point in quarantines, which lead to absences from work and psychological isolation,” he says.
Trilla, for example, believes that the mask should be kept inside shops and in crowds, but he believes it should be a recommendation and not an imposition. “In transport, it should continue to be maintained,” he says. For Almirante, the removal of face masks inside shops is a measure that had to be considered “one day or another” and now “is the right time“. “The United Kingdom, France, Northern Europe… have taken this measure and have had no problems,” says this infectious disease specialist at Vall d’Hebron.
No consensus
Madrid is the only autonomous community that has been openly in favor of the removal indoors. The Basque Country has asked for it to be maintained because experts consider that “it is still too early to relax all preventive measures”. And the rest of the communities have not expressed a clear position, appealing to “consensus” and the need for the decision to be agreed in technical bodies. Catalonia has aligned itself with the pediatricians and has called for the removal of masks in classrooms first (they even asked for this to be done as of 28 February) and then, progressively, in other areas.
The next important meeting between the Government and the autonomous regions is the Conference of Presidents next Sunday in La Palma, where the President could make an announcement related to the mask, given that he is the one who has been the protagonist of the warnings in this regard and the modification of the royal decree is the responsibility of the government. In fact, the end of the obligatory use of masks outdoors was communicated unilaterally by the Health Ministry, but in this case by the Minister Carolina Darias.
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