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The Generalitat of Catalonia admits companies that must resume the activity without the necessary instruments to screen their staff and thus avoid contagion in their staff once the de-escalation accelerates and, with it, the reinstatement of employees to their places is carried out of work.

"There is no diagnostic test that can show sufficient levels of reliability in the screening of workers to make decisions in the workplace", admits the Ministry of Health of the Generalitat in a manual on "reincorporation of professionals" published last 27 April and to which EL MUNDO has had access.

The Catalan Government clarifies to companies that workers who have been confined to their homes, have not had or have symptoms, or have maintained risky contacts with infected people should return to the workplace without undergoing any diagnostic test and simply comply with hygiene measures and recommended physical distance.

In the case of workers with symptoms compatible with Covid-19, the Generalitat points out to companies that their workers must be clinically diagnosed and subjected to PCR tests in the health system, both to confirm the disease and to ratify the disappearance of the virus body of the employee before returning to work.

However, the Generalitat's guide considers the possibility that infected employees can return to work without having been previously tested, despite the risk of contagion that this may entail. "If PCR cannot be performed, the worker with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 may return to work using non-evidence-based strategies," says the Health Department. This "strategy" is simply that the employee is discharged three days after he has stopped having a fever and his respiratory symptoms have subsided, and returns to work with a mask until those symptoms are completely resolved or until 14 days after the onset of the disease. "Whatever is longer," says the Generalitat manual.

Healthcare workers

These guidelines are the same ones that were applied for the reinstatement of health personnel and that later had to be corrected due to the unanimous complaint of doctors and nurses, who now must compulsorily undergo tests before returning to work. Even so, the Generalitat allows the return of toilets with a positive test if they present laboratory tests that show that they have developed Covid-19 antibodies, as this newspaper revealed.

The Generalitat's labor guidelines for the reactivation of labor demonstrate the lack of foresight and resources with which the Catalan Government is facing the pandemic, as admitted by its own health experts in a report published on April 29 and in which they accuse the Govern of having "underestimated" the health emergency.

This is proved by previous episodes such as the fiasco of the "mass screening" of the population that the Generalitat promised to promote on April 7, with up to 170,000 tests, of which only 48 had been carried out earlier this week, despite the fact that the Citizens have been able to leave their homes for outdoor activities for days, with the accumulation of people on public roads, especially in cities such as Barcelona.

In addition to the large number of infections (51,733) and deaths (5,471) in the autonomous community, the lack of tests to determine the real incidence of the coronavirus in the population also led the Generalitat to request the Government that most of Catalonia not enter in phase 1 of the lack of control next Monday. The Catalan Executive proposed that only three of the nine health areas into which the community divides begin de-escalation next Monday, as the Ministry of Health has ended up accepting . These are those framed in the province of Tarragona and the Pyrenean area of Valle de Arán . This means that just over 10% of the Catalan population -852,093 inhabitants- will see the measures to contain the virus relaxed on May 11.

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  • Barcelona
  • Infectious diseases
  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19
  • Lockdown
  • Quarantine
  • Descaled
  • Lack of confidence
  • economy
  • Catalonia
  • Tarragona

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