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ARCHIVED - Indoor masks could soon become a thing of the past in Spain
Experts believe indoor masks could be scrapped in Spain as early as April
Spain at last appears to be ready to say adios to the sixth wave of the pandemic, with the cumulative incidence rate dropping dramatically from 3,418 cases on January 21 to just 1,060 this Thursday February 16. With the certain knowledge that the Omicron variant is milder than its predecessors, it begs the question: are the days of Covid numbered and if so, when will Spain scrap the use of facemasks?
Many other countries such as France and US have completely disposed of this safety measure while others, like Ireland, no longer require masks inside bars and restaurants. Spain has taken rather a different tack, actually making masks mandatory both outdoors and in before Christmas, a measure which many experts deemed as completely useless.
“Using them outdoors did not make sense,” epidemiologist Quique Bassat said, while acknowledging that “there was a lot of political pressure to do something, and the government did the thing that was as least disruptive as possible.”
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Of course, the government once again scrapped outdoor masks last week, but many viral specialists now believe that the days of the indoor mask are coming to an end as the vaccination campaign continues at a steady pace.
And although Mr Bassat feels that, at least for the moment, masks still have a part to play, this will not last for much longer: “It depends on the speed that the curve descends and at what moment we consider that the risk of transmission and outbreaks is acceptable, because we will know that when we remove them indoors there will be more transmission.
This could happen at the end of April,” he has predicted.
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