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A waitress serves the table of some clients in a restaurant in the port of Palamós. © Toni Ferragut / EL PAÍS
The technicians who advise the Ministry of Health have proposed a battery of measures to tighten some restrictions in places where the pandemic has the greatest incidence.
This is the update
of the Coordinated Response Actions for the control of the transmission of COVID-19,
better known as the Health traffic light, which has been in force since October 22.
The new version of the draft prepared by the Health Alerts Report, advanced by Eldiario.es and to which EL PAÍS has had access, will be studied this Thursday in the Public Health Committee of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System.
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One of the changes it establishes is that at the high level of risk (between 150 and 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days, among other indicators), it recommends the closure of the interiors of the establishments, while the previous version was limited to advising the assessment of this measure.
At this threshold, he also sets a maximum of six people for social gatherings and four when the risk is extreme.
In any case, it is a technical recommendation document that includes many other variables and whose measures are not mandatory;
they are ultimately taken by the autonomous communities.
To calculate the risk of each territory (territorial units of more than 10,000 inhabitants), the document maintains the same criteria in force, with two blocks of parameters.
The first tries to measure the level of transmission of the virus through six statistics: the cumulative incidence per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days and in seven;
both measures, but referring to the population over 65 years of age;
the percentage of positivity of the diagnostic tests and the percentage of cases with traceability.
In the second block, healthcare capacity is measured through the occupation of beds in the ward and in the ICU.
Each of these metrics is assigned a value.
For example, the high risk threshold is more than 150 cases at 14 days;
more than 75 to a week;
more than 10% positivity in tests and less than 50% traceability, that is, only 10 out of 100 positives, or less, are known to contact.
In the assistance block, the high risk is reached when 10% of beds occupied by covid patients on the ward and 20% in intensive care are exceeded.
A territory is considered to be at a risk level when it has two or more indicators from the first block above the marked levels and at least one from the second.
Although the meters are designed for units smaller than the autonomous communities, they can also measure the risk in these territories.
According to the latest report from the Ministry of Health, five communities were at the high level of incidence: Asturias, Catalonia, Madrid, Navarra and the Basque Country, in addition to Ceuta and Melilla.
In the document update, in addition, special emphasis is placed on the trends of the pandemic, to anticipate events.
When the virus is growing, it is recommended to advance measures of a level of risk that has not yet been reached.
For example, if a community were at medium risk, but experienced an accelerated increase in cases, the draft proposes that from then on measures should be taken as if the risk were high.
Also on the contrary, it allows the measures to be de-scaled more quickly when the trend is very positive.
This document, in any case, will not be applicable for the next few days, since it will have to be studied by the Public Health commission (something that may happen this Thursday, but that may be delayed), and should also be approved by the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System.
He's months late.
The first versions were meant to be approved before Christmas, but they have been kept in a drawer until now.