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  • Health. The Autonomous Communities do thousands of tests on the professionals who used the 'fake' masks, for fear that they have been infected

Susana Martínez is a doctor at the Royo Villanova Hospital in Zaragoza . Her work in the ER has put her at the bottom of the canyon during the pandemic, but she had managed to haggle over the virus. Until now. Susana is now confined to her own home. Contagious. For "five or six days" in the first fortnight of April, he wore Garry Galaxy's now-famous N95 green pack mask. The one distributed by the Ministry of Health . The defective one. The one that did not protect well against the coronavirus. The fake .

After using it, and before the alarm generated by such a failure in the protection of the toilets, Susana underwent the test, like all those who breathed through the happy mask. The result, of course, "positive". So she is locked in her room. That is why the photo that illustrates this page is somewhat blurred: because his daughter made it with a cell phone "of the ancients". "He doesn't dare touch mine," he says with a mixture of resignation and irony. Now he doubts if his three daughters will be able to go out on the street or not: «When her mother is ill, I don't know ...».

Susana's is the first testimony from a healthcare professional who has proven infected after using the faulty N95. It will never be possible to know if he was infected "because of" the mask, but it will be known that "the probability of contagion greatly increased" with it. "Using these masks has been a Russian roulette", he assures this newspaper.

"I thought I was more protected with this mask, and it was worse," he recapitulates now, "a little bitch" but in one piece. "It is not that you relax" because of wearing protection that is good, "but you think you are safe now, and you do things that you would not do with a surgical mask." For example? "Talking on phone". "And you get closer to people, because they also don't hear you, being a thicker mask." "And you go quietly throughout the hospital, when with the surgery we only went to the clean area, and not to see patients," explains Dr. Martínez. With the mask on, on the contrary, he saw "about 15 suspects every 12 hours." "And these masks told us they lasted 60 hours," he adds.

The stars aligned against him, but to a large extent she was prepared for the contagion. But not like that. So now what? "As soon as I can, I'll report to the Ministry of Health. Let's see if in a particular or collective way. Because of the "negligence" of the Garry Galaxy, of course.

"There is no one at the wheel, that is the feeling it gives me," he says. «I only ask that someone take responsibility and have a little bullish shame. Let someone resign for giving us inadequate masks ». "At least show your face and rectify yourself and ask for forgiveness!"

"And to think," he concludes, "that we liked these masks more because they were more comfortable, and they didn't overwhelm us."

Other complaints

Susana's will not be the only complaint, of course. The State Confederation of Medical Trade Unions (CESM), the Independent Trade Union Central of Officials (CSIF) and the General Council of Nursing have announced individual complaints before the Supreme Court against the Minister of Health for alleged negligent action by having given, with the distribution of These fake masks, "at serious risk to the health and integrity of healthcare personnel" who used them trusting their complete suitability.

In this context, the seroprevalence study will be key to designing the start-up and the steps to follow in the deconfusion phase, it will finally begin next week with a delay of 20 days from the date it was announced. The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, announced it yesterday in the Health Commission of the Congress, pointing out that the start of this plan, which involves carrying out mass tests to get a "picture" of the epidemic province by province, will start on different days depending of the capacity of the Autonomous Communities, reports Marisa Cruz .

The epidemiological or seroprevalence study has been designed by the Carlos III National Institute of Health and the National Statistics Institute . This is a sampling in 36,000 households, which implies a total of 60,000 adults or children, chosen at random, who will undergo two tests, always voluntarily, to determine the extent of the pandemic, the degree of prevalence of the infection and estimate the percentage of immunized.

The selected households will receive a call in the next few days to make an appointment at the health center or a home visit in which they would undergo a rapid antibody test, consisting of a finger prick. To this, a second venipuncture test would be added to give maximum reliability to the results.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Salvador Illa
  • Madrid
  • Supreme court
  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19
  • Masks