Friday, March 29

Catalonia lifts the restrictions on capacity and meetings but maintains the closure of nightlife


Almost total end of the restrictions in Catalonia. The Government will lift the limitations against COVID-19 from Friday and will only maintain the closure of nightlife.

Ómicron resurrects doubts about the usefulness of the COVID passport in Spain

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As RAC-1 has advanced, the Generalitat will eliminate the prohibition of meetings of more than 10 people as well as the current capacity and time restrictions. These limitations now affected sectors such as restaurants, culture, gyms, amusement parks, religious acts and civil ceremonies, among others.

As the Government announced last week, from now on the restrictions to contain the spread of the pandemic are reviewed weekly. The Delegate Commission of the Generalitat for this matter, which includes the Ministers of Health and the Interior, has assessed these new measures only a week after deciding that the curfew had to be ended due to the slowdown in the sixth wave. This weekend has therefore been the first since last December 24 in which the ban on driving on the street at dawn was not in force.

As for the COVID-19 certificate, the Generalitat had commissioned its scientific advisory committee to evaluate its efficiency against the omicron variant, sensing that it is of little use in preventing contagion, but there is still no verdict.

The indicators of the pandemic in Catalonia are still installed at record values, although they are stabilizing. The one that tends to condition political decisions the most, the state of the ICUs, seems to have stagnated. This Monday in Catalan hospitals there were 506 critical patients, slightly below the peak that was recorded on January 17, with 527. Even so, the evolution of the pandemic is still unpredictable. Without going any further, 108 more hospitalized patients were reported, which brings the number of hospitalized to 2,816.

In terms of infections, its growth has also slowed down. An indicator that experts use to detect if the peak has been passed is when the cumulative incidence per 100,000 inhabitants at 14 days is not more than double that of seven days. And this is already the case in Catalonia: the first is 5,788.48 cases, while the second is 3,118.52.

One of the main fronts of pandemic management is right now in schools, since the population between 0 and 9 years old – which has a much lower vaccination rate than the rest – is the one with the highest incidence of infections. According to the latest data, there are 115,627 positive students, 8% of the total. Laia Asso, responsible for the Public Health programs for children and adolescents, acknowledged this Monday that with the omicron variant there has been more transmission in educational centers, although she has insisted that this is only a “reflection” of what happens outside of they.



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