Catalonia will again insist on face masks on public transport in autumn

Catalonia will reinforce, this autumn, the recommendation of the use of the mask in public transport, in the event of a foreseeable peak of contagions of covid-19 and other respiratory viruses. “Most likely when autumn comes, when there is likely to be an uptick, we will recommend it again [la mascarilla] more strongly.” said this Thursday the ‘conseller’ de Salut, Josep Maria Argimon, at a press conference to present the update of the vaccination schedule.

The obligatory wearing of face masks on airplanes, trains and public transportation is included in a decree, from last April, of the Government of Spain. But, when it comes down to it, there are. a lot of people who don’t use the mask in public transport, especially in the subway. “We have a decree that forces you to do a thing that is not done,” Argimon has said, questioning that it is not useful to make a rule that is not complied with.He has always been more in favor of it being a recommendation.

But, given that mandatory facemask wearing in public transportation is a state competence, communities such as Catalonia can only recommend its use or not. And, according to Argimon, it is planned to strengthen the promotion of its use from autumn onwards, the first with covid-19 in which the mask will no longer be mandatory indoors. Physicians are concerned that flu levels, for example, will return to those of the pre-pandemic era.

At the end of August, the secretary of Public Health herself, Carmen Cabezas, said that Catalonia will not ask, “for now”, the withdrawal of masks in public transport. “For now we can continue. We are entering the autumn season, a time of virus transmission, it costs us nothing to be a little cautious,” he said.

Countries such as France have already withdrawn the mask in public transport, but Spain keeps it for the time being.