The days are numbered for the obligation to wear a mask on the street in Spain; next week, this often-criticised Covid protection measure will disappear. When the Spanish cabinet meets early next week, it will pass a Royal Decree to end the need for masks to be worn at all times outside, reported the SER radio network, quoting Spanish government sources. The station explains that the measure will take effect immediately after publication and that that could mean the next day, Wednesday, February 9th, or at the latest, Thursday 10th. "The idea is that it will be published in the official gazette on Wednesday and could become effective from Thursday," health minister Carolina Darias later confirmed to SER.
The Spanish government will take this decision just a week after Congress validated the decree that made it compulsory, for the second period in the pandemic, to wear a mask when outside in the Spanish state. Cabinet approved the measure in December, just before the Christmas holidays, and was heartily criticised for it. The Catalan administration was one of those who questioned the effectiveness of the measure. In the vote in Congress, on Tuesday, February 1st - which was to validate the measure after it had already been in force for over a month - only the favourable votes of the Basque PNV, the Galician BNG and the Valencians of Compromís joined the governing parties, the PSOE and Unidas Podemos. ERC, JxCat, PDeCAT, CUP, EH Bildu and Més País abstained, while PP, Vox, Cs and UPN voted against. In recent days, the health minister, Carolina Darias, has been saying that a review of the mask mandate was likely.
Latest Covid data in Spain
The Spanish government now thinks the measure can be relaxed in the face of an improving epidemiological situation; all indicators are going down steadily. Spain has surpassed 94,000 deaths from Covid since the start of the pandemic, as the state's sixth wave declines. Fourteen-day incidence has dropped 144 points, to 2,420 cases per 100,000 people, with 74,368 new positives detected in the last 24 hours. Data released by the health ministry shows 183 deaths reported by regional governments in the last day and a total of 809 in the last week. Since March 2020 there have been 94,040 deaths from Covid in Spain. The total number of confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic is around 10.2 million, including all those detected by tests and reported to the community health services. On the other hand, the occupancy of hospitals both in normal wards (13.5%) and in intensive care units (20.6%) has fallen again slightly over the last day.
Argimon's opinion
Meanwhile, the Catalan minister of health, Josep Maria Argimon, said on Thursday that the mandatory use of a mask on the street "is about to end". In fact, he recalled that we are facing a "mainly indoor" pandemic, which is why, according to him, it makes no sense for the mask to be mandatory outside. Argimon stressed that the mask should not be mandatory if a person is walking alone on the street, or if people together outside were all in the same household bubble.