Spain wants to consider the coronavirus as a normal flu, an endemic disease that comes back regularly. A new strategy will be put in place once the sixth wave of infections is over.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed in an interview with Cadena Ser radio that the government will change its strategy to fight the coronavirus “no longer as a pandemic but as an endemic disease”. “New instruments are needed for this, and we will also have to conduct this debate at European level”, he said.
In this new health context, the next step will be to start managing the Covid in a way that is closer to the flu. That is to say by no longer counting each case and no longer having recourse to the test for the slightest symptom. The goal is to now treat Covid-like another respiratory disease. The Spanish health authorities have already been working on this transition for months to gradually move to so-called “sentinel” surveillance.
The Covid has been compared to the flu from the start of the pandemic. But with the deterioration of health conditions and the increase in resuscitations across Europe, the outlook on the coronavirus has changed. But according to an official from the National Influenza Center in Spain, “over time, covid needs to be normalized and monitored like other respiratory diseases, with sentinel primary care physicians, who diagnose by clinical syndrome; performing PCR on hospitalized patients and continuing to study the virus to see how it mutates. ” Especially since the flu is not neutral.
For example, in 2018 in France, 275,000 new cases of influenza were detected in the first week of January. The 2016-2017 influenza epidemic caused the death of 14,000 patients, almost all of those over the age of 75. In 2018, the flu epidemic was of exceptional magnitude, the Ministry of Health reported at the time.
In Spain, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III points out that during the 2017-2018 season, the flu directly or indirectly caused around 15,000 deaths in Spain. This represents an average of 41 deaths per day due to a disease which, over the past 100 years, has not conditioned the lives of citizens.
This is why Spain has chosen to review its strategy. By reducing its anti-Covid arsenal in recent months as the sixth wave rages in the country. A diametrically opposed situation in the spring of 2020 when the country had established one of the strictest confinements in Europe. However, this winter, the restrictions are limited to wearing a mask indoors and outdoors. Some autonomous regions such as Catalonia have rolled out a health pass for restaurants or have decided to close nightclubs. But the measures are generally lightened, as the quarantine of people who test positive has also been relaxed.
