In the image, agents of the municipal police, in control tasks in the Puente de Vallecas, in Madrid, this Wednesday.Rodrigo Jiménez / EFE
The Community of Madrid requested this Wednesday urgent military and police support from the Government to help with health measures and implement the restrictions on mobility that it has imposed in 37 basic health areas since last Monday and that, it announced, will expand to more - no it's clear how many - on Friday, though it won't take effect until next week.
The Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has been taking steps behind most of the autonomies, which introduced similar restrictions when the epidemic was in much lower numbers, although none has had such limitations on so much population (850,000 inhabitants) since the state of alarm .
Madrid is reluctant to declare a lockdown in the entire region, something that its president leaves as a "last option" due to its economic impact, when more voices begin to sound among the experts so as not to delay these limitations.
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But the community, for the moment, is not in that scenario.
"We have decided to formally request the Government of Spain in a meeting this Thursday for urgent military logistical support for the installation of tents, conducting tests and disinfection work in each of the basic health areas with restrictions in force," he listed this Wednesday after the Governing Council Ignacio Aguado, vice president and spokesperson for the Regional Government.
"Secondly, we will request the deployment of 222 members of the National Police and Civil Guard in the 37 basic health areas to carry out inspection tasks for the effective compliance of quarantines and the sanction of non-compliance," he added.
"And thirdly, we are going to ask for an express reform of the current regulations to immediately incorporate the 300 non-EU doctors who were working during the first wave in Madrid, and now, as a result of current state restrictions, we cannot contract ”, he concluded in a list of requests that Madrid wants to put into effect on Monday.
The situation of the community was summarized this Wednesday on Twitter by Miguel Hernán, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University: “The number of people admitted to the ICU for covid-19 in Madrid is greater than the number of actual ICU beds in each hospital .
We are once again facing a serious health emergency.
The ICUs were our last line of defense.
Without adequate diagnostic capacity, trackers, or isolation and quarantine supervision, the only thing left to do was trust not to saturate the hospitals.
A new confinement is necessary to maintain minimum standards in hospitals ”.
1 /
Yesterday 36% of ICUs in Madrid were occupied by patients with # COVID19, according to official figures: https://t.co/xRjZ34IH6X
Incorrect.
Yesterday 95% of ICUs in Madrid were occupied by COVID-19 (112% in public hospitals). Https://t.co/btz9tNNPaO
Why the discrepancy?
pic.twitter.com/u9NWfe5LZJ
- Miguel Hernán (@_MiguelHernan) September 23, 2020
Although official statistics indicate that Madrid's ICUs have an occupancy of 38%, they have beds specially set up for the pandemic that compromise the normal operation of hospitals.
According to a group of doctors from 62 hospitals, the percentage of occupancy of critical beds for which there are staff and resources in normal situations is 95% in the community.
"Madrid today has as many hospitalized for covid-19 as at the beginning of the state of alarm, but the curve is flatter so the confinement will be shorter.
Besides, it doesn't have to be strict ”, proclaims Hernán in line with several of his colleagues consulted.
It proposes teleworking, closing universities, secondary schools, closed public places (bars, gyms ...), a mask indoors and outdoors within two meters, open parks, walks without congregating and sports outdoors.
In the opinion of several experts consulted, the measures that Madrid has taken arrive late and are difficult to comply with.
"All that the community asks for is necessary, they are war measures, like those of the spring, but insufficient," says Jesús Molina Cabrillana, secretary of the Spanish Society of Preventive Medicine, Public Health and Hygiene.
He calls for a confinement that extends practically to the entire region, due to the high incidence of the epidemic and because he considers it ineffective to confine by interconnected health districts that citizens often do not understand.
The socialist Ramón Jurado, mayor of Parla, who has two basic health areas with restrictions, demands that they be extended to the entire city, precisely because of the "confusion" that has been generated in the neighbors.
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Dense, with more immigrants and especially poorer
Experts question Madrid's restrictions: they are late and insufficient
He also supports the extension of confinement, in an equivalent to what was during the state of alarm phase 1 (with terraces and walks, with shops by appointment) José Martínez Olmos, professor at the Andalusian School of Public Health.
“Time will give or take away reason, but it gives the impression that we are behind the virus in Madrid.
Measures have been called for for a long time, such as reinforcing primary care and trackers ”, he points out.
In fact, at the beginning of the year, Más Madrid took a proposal to the regional Assembly so that the Community could have extra-community doctors, thus alleviating its staff deficits.
The Government, which make up PP and Cs, rejected the measure, as did Vox.
"It is not the responsibility of the Community to modify state regulations to allow the hiring of non-community doctors," Aguado said this Wednesday, despite the fact that the statute of public personnel allows both the Courts and the regional Assemblies to do so (there are communities that already have those professionals).
"What we have asked the Ministry in writing is to speed up the approval of titles, which has already enabled the ministerial order in a state of alarm," explained the Ministry of Health, led by Enrique Ruiz Escudero.
"It has been proposed on several occasions to continue hiring them and there has been no response," they added, in an implicit reference to the fact that the Community tries to take advantage of the new political climate that presides over the relations between the two Administrations.
The community managers, who will meet this Thursday with their counterparts from the central government, ask that all these changes take effect next Monday.
An expansion of the number of areas with restricted mobility in the region is also planned for that date, and the possibility of applying more time and capacity limitations to all businesses.
In the 37 basic health areas affected by specific restrictions, they have to close at 10 pm (except for pharmacies, health centers or gas stations), and their capacity is limited to 50%.
In the case of those dedicated to the hospitality industry, the 50% capacity limitation applies indoors and outdoors, and consumption in bars is prohibited.
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 Spain and in each autonomy
- Download the tracking application for Spain
- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities
- Guide to action against the disease
