The Sociedad Española de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria has published an editorial where they recommend treating Covid as if it were flu now.
This society of family doctors or GPs consider that it is time to go back to how things were done before the pandemic, by dropping the use of masks and every other restriction.
“Neither the Public Health System nor society in general can continue to deal with testing people with mild or no symptoms and putting everybody that tests positive into quarantine, causing stress on society and on the economy, owing the massive amount of people off work” reads their communiqué.”
“We must end this exceptionality: Covid should be treated just like the rest of illnesses,” adding, “acquired immunity and the arrival of Omicron makes this possible,” it stated.
They consider that the present counter measures consume to many resources and too much time and that when cases increase suddenly the system becomes unviable and collapses quickly.
They suggest:
* Stop testing healthy people with minor symptoms.
* Stop trying to trace contacts.
* Despense with manditory quarantining.
All of the above made sense before, they consider, but not now, thanks to acquired immunity either through having recovered from Covid or through the vaccines, ever since Omicron arrived.
By only treating people who really need it (as is the case with flu) then the health service can recover enough to provide for normal, primary care.
The Central Government seems to be heading in this direction anyway, as expressed by the PM in an interview on national radio, where he said that the Ministerio de Sanidad and health experts have been working for some time on a strategy of treating Covid the same as flu, using sentinel-surveillance data provided by selected primary-attention sources.
So, summing up, the society of family doctors or GPs, considers that the Government should concentrate its health resources on vulnerable (old/infirm) rather than trying to prevent the spread of the virus on a national level.
(News: Spain)