Spain to ease pressure from health services by reducing quarantine period

Spain has announced that the Quarantine period for people who have asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 will have to spend seven days in quarantine than ten days to relieve pressure on public health services.

The decision was made at a weekly meeting of the Public Health Commission on Wednesday by representatives of the Spanish Ministry of Health and 17 autonomous regions of the country.

The Commission also agreed that close contact with positive cases should be quarantined for seven days if they are not vaccinated. However, the vaccinated contacts are not obliged to isolate.

New measures are expected to relieve some of the pressure from Spanish public health services that have been hit hard by the recent wave of new COVID-19 cases.

The Health Ministry has recorded that over 5,000 health workers were infected with COVID-19 in the 14 days before December 23, with an average count of 370 new cases a day. Shortening the forced quarantine period would also allow some of those workers to return by the start of New Year.

The Commission also agreed to reduce participation in sporting events to 75% for outdoor events and 50% for indoor events.

The measures took place a day after Spain recorded a total of 6 million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began. The Ministry of Health of Spain reported 99,671 new cases 24 hours from 2 pm on Monday and Tuesday, with 114 deaths confirmed between them.

As a result, the total number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic has increased to 6,032,297, and the number of people who have died has risen to 89,253.

Meanwhile, the 14-day incidence of COVID-19 infections has been increased by 154 points to 1,360.62 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, setting a new record following the previous record on Monday.