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Madrid closes today, opens on Tuesday

2020-10-30T00:23:54.521Z


The communities are confined perimeter: only Extremadura, Galicia and the islands remain open. Meanwhile, cases continue to rise with a new daily record, 23,580


If at the beginning of the middle week Spain was heading to the perimeter confinement, this Thursday, with the proximity of the All Saints bridge (a holiday in six communities) and the incidence of the coronavirus triggered with a new record of daily positives, practically all the autonomies had already made the decision to close its borders.

Only the islands, Galicia and Extremadura are now open to entries and exits.

Except for the latter, these are territories with a better than average epidemiological situation.

The Valencian Community was the last to announce it, this Thursday afternoon.

And then there is Madrid, which once again has distanced itself from the rest and has proposed an intermediate solution and that according to experts will bring more confusion than effects against the pandemic: the perimeter closure only during the next two bridges.

  • Reported cases beat their record and reach 23,580 in 24 hours

  • These are the restrictions in each community

  • The Valencian Community and Cantabria approve the closure of their territories

  • The Government allows Madrid to close only this bridge

Just one day before the festive period, the 6.5 million people in Madrid had nothing clear this Thursday afternoon which restrictions will come into effect in their community or when.

The regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, insisted since Wednesday, when she broke the agreement with Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León to announce the joint closure, to confine only this weekend and the next, bridge also when the Almudena, festivity in Madrid capital.

In other words, Madrid proposed to close three days, open five and close three again.

And this despite the fact that the decree of the state of alarm clearly establishes a minimum of seven days.

Confusion reigned throughout the day.

Madrid insisted that its interpretation of the decree allowed it to divide the seven days into two periods, while sources from Moncloa informed the media that it cannot be confined for days because it is "technically impossible."

Measurements must last at least seven days.

Carmen Calvo, first vice president of the Government, said that the clause was not going to be modified and accused Ayuso of acting "in a calculated way to create confusion."

In the late afternoon a call between the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, and the Madrid Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, ended with an alleged permission from the Government for Madrid to apply its intermittent closure.

Ayuso had had his way, for now.

In a confusing statement issued at eight o'clock in the afternoon, Health delayed the discussion on the temporality of the measures to seven days to the next meeting of the Interterritorial Council, next Wednesday.

In the meantime, and unless Health makes any other decision before that date, Ayuso will allow that on Tuesday, the first working day, it is possible to re-enter and leave the Community of Madrid.

Does it make sense to close only three days?

Why then was a minimum of seven imposed?

Fernando Simón, director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), responded like this this Thursday: “A confinement of a few days also has an effect.

Not the one we would like, but some have ”.

Experts such as Daniel López Acuña, former Director of Emergencies for the World Health Organization (WHO), are somewhat more forceful: “From an epidemiological point of view, it makes no sense to do a three-day perimeter confinement, reopen, reopen close… It completely breaks the notion of what the perimeter closure public health strategy is ”.

The epidemiologist adds that this measure tries to reduce the probability of human interactions, the irradiation of cases and the importation of cases.

“And doing this for three days is a partial measure.

It is the same nonsense that has been committed with the closures in certain basic areas of Madrid and not in others ”, he adds.

"What is behind all this, beyond the will to politically bother, is a notable lack of epidemiological knowledge."

Pedro Gullón, from the Spanish Epidemiology Society, believes that in the current situation, with such high transmission, a three-day perimeter closure "generates more confusion than anything else."

But he concedes, like Simón, that it can have some benefit: “It is more effective during bridges and weekends because that is when there are more non-essential trips, but of course it generates a lot of chaos that is done intermittently.

It makes little sense.

In the current situation, the perimeter closures should be maintained for a longer time because the situation is not going to change and the possibility of transmission is still there ”.

"It's a mistake," says López Acuña about the Health permit for the intermittent closure of Ayuso.

“You cannot be compromising with decisions that are not epidemiologically supported.

A health authority should not allow it ”.

The inhabitants of Madrid, and those who had planned to travel to the community, were still uncertain in the late afternoon.

They knew what the intention of the Madrid president was, but not from when the restrictions would take effect.

Around nine at night, the Community of Madrid sent a statement announcing that the closure would be decreed three hours later, at midnight, coinciding with its publication in the

Official Gazette

.

The region, therefore, is confined between zero hours on Friday and zero hours on Tuesday, November 3.

And although Health summoned the communities to meet on Wednesday to discuss the closure for days, the regional government has already set the hours of the next bridge: from 00:00 on Friday the 6th to 00:00 on Tuesday the 10. Sources from the regional government assured that the Minister saw good to close Madrid for days if they add the seven that the decree requests.

"It is the same as Ceuta has done," they said from around the president.

Ceuta has decided to close the autonomous city on weekends, after verifying that this is when the greatest mobility occurs.

10 more days to see the effect of the curfew

The curfew, or the prohibition of going out to the street at night, fulfilled its fourth day of validity yesterday.

All the communities, except the Canary Islands, apply this restriction to the mobility of citizens, although with different hours: some start at 11pm and others at 0.00.

The effects of this measure will still take a few days to be noticed, says epidemiologist Daniel López Acuña.

“As with total confinement or any other measure, there is a delay of 10 to 14 days to observe a net effect, for the incubation period of the disease.

It must be remembered that when the total confinement was carried out in March it took 15 days to see the fall in the incidence, the reduction in transmission ”, he explains.

Information about the coronavirus

- Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic

- This is how the coronavirus curve evolves in the world

- Download the tracking application for Spain

- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities

- Guide to action against the disease

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-10-30

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