SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 8. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology and head of the Epidemiology and Prevention of Public Health section, Amós García, stated this Tuesday that it is “very close” to be able to eliminate the masks indoors because the trend of infections by Covid-19 is “descending” throughout the country.
“We are on the right track but not yet on the way to get rid of all prudence and life in a pandemic,” he indicated in statements to Europa Press in which he points out that measures are already “normalizing” but they still cannot ” give dates” but wait for the “results” of the evolution of infections.
In his opinion, “I don’t think we’re far away, but you can’t say if it’s going to last a week, two weeks or three weeks.”
García has admitted the increase in the Cumulative Incidence by more than 40 percent last week in the Canary Islands, but it is not that there is an epidemiological behavior “different” from that of the Peninsula, but rather that the data is being updated because there was no capacity to do so during the high peaks of the sixth wave.
Thus, he pointed out that the important thing now is to analyze the hospital impact of Covid-19 and there is “clearly” a decrease, something that he attributes to a “new scenario” that has opened up throughout Europe due to the “so brutal” impact. that it has had the omicron variant and that it has generated a broad natural immunity together with that provided by vaccines.
For García, this may represent “a turning point” in the evolution of the pandemic and in that sense, he believes that spring will be key to knowing the future of Covid-19 and if it definitely passes into an endemic phase because this type of viruses, with the passage of time, also “lose virulence”.
“Perhaps something happens and invalidates it, but everything indicates that spring will be very important for the future of the pandemic,” he added, stressing that “it is perfectly possible” even that there may be street carnivals without many restrictions in June in Santa Cruz of Tenerife.
YOU CAN’T “LET YOUR GUARD DOWN” YET
However, he has insisted that the guard cannot yet be completely “lowered” since in the Canary Islands there are around 1,000 infections a day, but three or four weeks ago they were around 5,000, so the trend is downward. .
In addition, García is clear that “the virus is here to stay” and will be incorporated into the “catalogue” of usual coronaviruses and the objective is to turn it “into one more” and eliminate the “dramatic burden” of deaths and admissions to the ICU.
“We achieve that with the vaccine so that the virus adapts to one more,” he pointed out.
Regarding the possible appearance of new variants, he commented that “it will be linked” to developed countries “stop looking at their navel” and do not accumulate vaccines because they have more than 70% “and in many cases they expire in the refrigerators “.
On the contrary, he has indicated that underdeveloped and developing countries “have unacceptable figures” and it is an “unfair situation” that also makes it possible for the virus to continue circulating and producing new cases and therefore “possible mutations and new variants” .
