Fernando Simón, director of the CCAES, has defended that the obligation to wear a mask in outdoor spaces should be eliminated if a safety distance of more than 1.5 meters is maintained. This more restrictive use of the face mask was approved in the so-called The Government and the CCAAs are already working on modifying this aspect within the framework of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System.
“Of course, it is being discussed within the Interterritorial Council to make the proposals that have to be made and to be able to make those modifications that I think is common sense,” Fernando Simón explained at the press conference this Monday. In addition, the epidemiologist pointed out that “this law had to be made”, but has stated that he hopes that this change in the text related to masks “will be corrected soon.
What changes to the mandatory use of masks dictates the ‘law of the new normality’
The law published on Tuesday in the BOE, called , on urgent prevention, containment and coordination measures to deal with the health crisis caused by COVID19, mostly includes the text of . However, there is an important change regarding the use of face masks.
The people, from the age of six, to wear a mask on public roads, in outdoor spaces and in any closed space for public use or that is open to the public. In other words, the approved wording of the law eliminated the final paragraph of the two letters, a) and b), of section 1 of article 6 of the Royal Decree, in which the use of the mask in public spaces was conditioned on the impossibility of guarantee the maintenance of an interpersonal safety distance of 1.5 meters. Likewise, the new norm has eliminated the reference to the 1.5 meter safety distance in the case of educational centers.
The elimination of this condition has created doubts about whether from now on it will be necessary to wear face masks in open spaces such as beaches, swimming pools or when carrying out outdoor activities, such as in the mountains. However, the law does not specifically include what happens in these cases, since the
The Government and CCAA work on a solution
Given the commotion caused by the tightening of the law, the Ministry of Health has committed, within the framework of the celebration of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System this Wednesday, to work technically to try to develop criteria for the application of the law. Minister Carolina Darias has set herself the objective of “trying to find in the margin of this legal framework” how to apply it “in the most harmonized way possible and, above all, in the most contextualized way possible.”
The proposal that the Ministry of Health has brought to the Interterritorial Council this Wednesday is based on proposing the use of the mandatory mask on the beaches when you are walking or in situations where there is no safety distance, while excluding yourself while bathing , the practice of sport or during rest periods in a fixed place, both at sea and in swimming pools and other aquatic spaces.
This modulation that the Government intends would fall within article 6.2 of the regulation, which establishes that the use of the mask can be exempted when, due to the very nature of the activities, this use is incompatible, in accordance with the indications of the health authorities. . Thus, Health will propose to the Plenary of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System this afternoon, that activities that involve intense physical effort, of a non-sporting nature, outdoors and individually, be equated to the exercise of individual sports.
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