The Conselleria de Salut de Catalunya asks asymptomatic (not vaccinated) people who have been in contact with a positive for covid-19 to avoid going to the primary care center (CAP) and confine themselves directly to their homes for 10 days. Salut will not do diagnostic tests. Those who feel unwell and have symptoms should see their family doctor. In addition, close contacts who are vaccinated with the full regimen do not need to be PCR or quarantined.
“If you are not feeling bad, stay at home. Primary care is bordering on collapse, there is a very high difficulty in managing flows”, said this Thursday at a press conference the director of the Catalan Health Service (CatSalut), Gemma Craywinckel .
Faced with the exponential increase in infections, whose diagnosis and monitoring (as well as vaccination) are essentially falling on the CAP, Salut seeks to separate the flows between people who require health care and those who do not.
The saturation levels of the primary school are similar to those of the first wave. And, since there is already community transmission, the ‘conselleria’ does not now seek to know how many positives there are by doing tests, but to maintain the functioning of the system.
Thus, close contacts without symptoms (who are not vaccinated or are half vaccinated) will not be given a diagnostic test by Salut (neither PCR nor antigens), but they will have to stay at home keeping a quarantine of 10 days. On the contrary, close contacts who are vaccinated with the complete schedule should not be PCR and should not be quarantined , as stated in the protocol change announced Monday by Salut.
In addition, people who are close contact and have an appointment to be vaccinated should keep quarantine and change the day and time of the puncture.
“We are having a very important rise in cases in a very short period of time,” said the Secretary of Public Health of Catalonia, Carmen Cabezas. Even so, he has pointed out that this fifth pandemic wave has “different considerations” from others, with a “less serious” profile.
Although primary school is the most affected, all this already has an impact also on hospital admissions, although people who are vaccinated enter less and “the impact on the ucis is not comparable with other waves.” “But there is repercussion,” Cabezas said. The average age of those admitted to ucis for covid is 51.8 years, 11 years less than months ago.
