The strategy against winter viruses remains up in the air due to the lack of agreement between Health and the communities | Society

The respiratory virus epidemic each winter is just around the corner: its proliferation is a certainty, what remains to be seen is how (its intensity) and when. For the first time, the Ministry of Health wanted to approve a strategy to deal with them similar to the one used for covid, but the Public Health Commission that met this Thursday (made up of the general directors of the ministry itself and the communities ) has not reached an agreement, as sources at the meeting have confirmed to EL PAÍS.

In a previous document, which had been written by technicians from all administrations in the Alerts Presentation, they proposed four epidemiological scenarios, from least to most severe (from 0 to 3), as announced this Wednesday by the Efe agency. But there are technical discrepancies in some communities with what their own officials had written, so the council vote will be postponed and the document will continue to be studied.

The Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, has summarized the Government’s point of view in the social network to the respiratory virus epidemic. The irresponsibility is enormous and I hope they reconsider.”

This newspaper has asked the popular communities what their position is, but those who have responded prefer not to take a position until a new meeting of the Public Health Commission is held. It will probably be before the end of the month, according to sources from the Ministry of Health.

But it is not only the representatives of PP communities who are suspicious of the document. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health of Castilla-La Mancha, governed by the PSOE, explains: “A draft has been presented to us and we consider that more work should be done at a technical level. We believe that the use of a mask should not be a policy.”

Ministry sources appear surprised that the autonomies amend their own technicians. “It was a document that comes from previous work by the Center for Coordination of Emergencies and Health Alerts, worked together with several communities that wanted to participate and which was then refined into a presentation in which everyone is present,” they point out.

What the text proposed was to establish certain measures and recommendations in each of the scenarios. He proposed recommending masks to symptomatic people during the entire period of respiratory infections, as well as self-isolation as far as possible, teleworking, if the circumstances arose. He also recommended hygiene, “especially” of hands; prioritize outdoor spaces, avoid crowds and properly ventilate spaces.

The document under discussion proposes establishing thresholds based on the incidence rate, hospitalization, bed occupancy or ICU admissions, something set by the Surveillance System for Acute Respiratory Infections in Spain (SiVIRA), the registry of temporary disability processes. (IT), wastewater control tools, the daily mortality monitoring system (MoMo), the Vaccination Information System (SIVAMIN) and information on healthcare capacity and hospital occupancy of the communities.

As the indicators increased, the recommendations would expand. Practically all of what the strategy proposes are just that, recommendations. It only proposes “assessing the mandatory nature” of the mask in health centers in “specific situations”, when “vulnerability so determines”.

The plan tries to be a response to the saturation of health centers that occurs every year due to winter respiratory viruses. In last year’s campaign, the Health Ministries of the communities governed by the Popular Party demanded more planning from the ministry.

Last January, at the peak of infections, Mónica García’s ministry made masks mandatory in health centers, a measure highly discussed by the majority of regional officials. The idea of ​​this document was precisely to establish clear thresholds that established when to take certain measures, and thus avoid improvisation.

Lack of toilets

However, although the recommendations can mitigate infections, they are not a magic wand to avoid saturation of the system, which usually falls short in dealing with epidemics. Last year, the rise in infections coincided with Christmas, when half of the healthcare workers were on vacation.

The CSIF union has recently denounced that, last September, the health sector dispensed with 15,299 contracts throughout Spain “despite the difficult situation that the different health regions will face with the arrival of low temperatures.”

“We raise the alarm to demand urgent reinforcements before the arrival of autumn. Neither the Ministry of Health nor the autonomous communities have implemented measures to prevent Primary Care and hospital emergencies from becoming stressed due to lack of personnel, as happens every year. We fear that this season the situation will be especially serious due to the information that our union delegates are collecting in the different autonomous communities, in relation to staffing and hiring,” the union lamented in a statement.