Health refuses to modify the alarm decree for now to advance the curfew
The Minister of Health has for now rejected the request of eight communities to modify the decree of a state of alarm to allow the curfew to be advanced as a measure against the third wave of COVID-19. It is currently established between 22:00 and 00:00 and several regional governments asked that it be at 20:00. Salvador Illa has heard in today's Interterritorial Council, the meeting that gathers him weekly with all the councilors of the branch, all the positions, and has promised that "they will be studied", but for the moment the decree does not change. The position of Health is that with the current state of alarm there is enough room to establish sufficient measures to stop the third wave, such as the closure of all businesses and the limitation of meetings.
Those who have asked to advance the curfew are: Euskadi, Galicia, Andalusia (the latter two have also asked for the possibility of home isolation, as elDiario.es has learned), Asturias (at 6:00 p.m.), the Valencian Community , Castilla-La Mancha, Balearic Islands and Castilla y León. Murcia was inclined, but finally in the meeting he has not intervened - his Minister of Health has resigned minutes after the Council ended after the scandal that it was known that he had been vaccinated without it being his turn.
"We are going to study it, we have not reached any conclusion" and "we are going to evaluate it", but the matter has "nuances" such as that if the curfew is brought forward, people's activity could be concentrated in other bands. "It is not so much a matter of adding many more measures at once, but of applying well the ones we have adopted and expecting the results well," Salvador Illa said at a press conference. "We already saw it when we managed to break the second wave and we managed to reduce the incidence, hospitalizations and ICUs," he insisted, referring to the fact that in autumn the cumulative incidence was lowered from more than 600 to slightly less than 200 - the objective It was 25–.
The government had expressed its reluctance to change the decree of state of alarm, which will last until May. The change would require a meeting of the Council of Ministers, or design a new one that would have to be defended in Congress by a member of the Government. That would be a difficult showcase for Salvador Illa in the pre-campaign of the Catalan elections, for which he is a candidate for the PSC and for which the entire opposition has urged him to leave his post in Health.
