Health And The Communities Approve The Perimeter Closure At Easter

The Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS) has approved this Wednesday the restrictions for the San José bridge and Holy Week, in which there will be a perimeter closure in the autonomous communities, except in the case of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.

The agreement has only had the negative vote of the Community of Madrid, but it will be “mandatory”, as reiterated by the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, sources present at the meeting inform EL PAÍS. Madrid announced this afternoon that it will not close the Community.

“Madrid is not going to close the perimeter. We will take the measures that we believe are appropriate ”, confirmed the Regional Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero.

The council has approved the document that Health had presented the previous day, which includes the perimeter closure of the autonomous communities between March 26 to April 9 and from March 17 to 21 in those territories where the day is a holiday 19.

It also establishes the imposition of a curfew throughout the territory that can go between 23:00 and 6:00, although the communities can advance it at 22:00. Regarding the number of people that can meet, they will be limited to a maximum of four in closed public spaces and six in open public spaces, except in the case of cohabitants.

In private spaces, meetings will be limited to cohabitants. In addition, massive events “of any kind” that involve “agglomeration or concentration of people” will be prohibited.

Although the harmony with the document has been general, some regional councilors have put some buts to the writing. That of the Basque Country has made it clear that it is a minimum agreement and that each autonomy can go further in the restrictions. In Catalonia they have objected to reducing the number of people in social gatherings to four and both Madrid and Galicia have protested the exception of the islands, the same sources say.

This exception, in any case, only allows residents to return or to travel between archipelagos, always with a negative diagnostic test, since the rest of the regions will be closed and citizens will not be able to leave them except for justified causes that the state of alarm collects. such as medical tests, work, dependent care, or exams.

Despite the negative vote of the Community of Madrid, President Isabel Díaz Ayuso had already said on Tuesday that she would abide by the decision. Madrid has already complied with the decision agreed by a majority in the CISNS to allow mobility between autonomies only to relatives and friends , limiting what then, as now, governed the community: you could enter and leave freely.

But it rebelled when, before the approval of the state of alarm, the same interterritorial imposed the perimeter closure of the municipalities that exceeded 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitantsand will reach a certain hospital saturation.

For practical purposes, this only affected 10 municipalities in Madrid, including the capital. Madrid appealed, won in court, was able to open and the Government imposed an express state of alarm for two weeks on the Community.

However, this afternoon the Minister of Health has rejected the closure. It has been confirmed by the Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, who, faced with the possibility of appealing this measure, has said that the “current competent delegate” to decide is “the president of the Community”: “We will take the measures that we believe are appropriate” .

The coronavirus moves towards stagnation
Two experts in constitutional law consulted by EL PAÍS agree that, if the closure is appealed, Madrid would have everything to win. “The current state of alarm leaves decisions such as perimeter closures in the hands of the autonomous communities, they cannot be imposed from the CISNS”, argues Alberto López Basaguren, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of the Basque Country.

“The council can prepare proposals and recommendations, but it cannot prevent each community from applying its powers,” adds Elviro Aranda, professor at Carlos III. However, for practical purposes, since all other communities are closed except the islands, Madrilenians could only travel to the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.

The measures taken by the interterritorial are “reasonable”, in the opinion of Fernando Rodríguez-Artalejo, Professor of Public Health at the Autonomous University of Madrid. “The percentage of vaccinated is still very low, the decline in the contagion rate is slowing down, there are still many patients in ICUs, and the situation in the nearest Europe is getting much worse,” he argues.

They are also so for Pedro Gullón, from the Spanish Epidemiology Society, who recalls that in reality everything will depend on the compliance of citizens, since it is impossible to carry out exhaustive controls that monitor all movements.

In his opinion, the attempt to avoid “excessive mobility”, especially at a time with very different incidences of the virus between communities, is logical, but it would also make sense to allow some non-vacation trips: “People are very tired, there are people that they are very lonely and perhaps mobility for care could have been studied ”.