Once again, and we have already lost count of the number of times it has happened, the Covid indicators have boiled over and the Catalan government is having to reverse its de-escalation measures just a few weeks after approving them. Catalonia leads the ranking of infections in Europe, primary care centres (CAP) are overwhelmed, hospitalizations are increasing, as are intensive care admissions, and the Catalan health minister, Dr Josep Maria Argimon, has acknowledged that neither he nor his department expected to find themselves in this situation. The virus baffles doctors and politicians and causes the handbrake to be eased off due to public exhaustion - and please, stop criminalizing young people, without whose exemplary behaviour for fifteen months it would have been impossible to carry out previous de-escalation processes.
The Delta variant has exceeded the forecasts with a graphline of mushrooming infections which is closer to vertical than anything that had been seen in any of the previous waves; tourism areas are gasping for air; hospitals are re-evaluating holiday shifts for the coming weeks and members of the public are not sure if these measures will be the last and what possibilities there will be in the coming weeks for family gatherings, which in summer are usually very numerous.
And vaccines are the remedy, but we are also beginning to realize that they are not a complete remedy, something we had been told, but had not wanted to process. Nor are vaccines a blank cheque to do just what you did before the pandemic, nor are young people immune from the intensive care units, as these days the data has shown that one in four seriously-ill admissions belongs to the bottom age group of the pandemic, those under 40. Hospitality, nightlife and the festivals sector will be the hardest hit in this first selection of industries which have to reverse their recent progress. It is a blow to the coastal areas of the country, especially considering that we are in no sense talking about specific measures to cover a couple of weeks, but rather, steps that will be with us for much of the month of August.
Imposing a total closure at 12:30am is, in practice, a mini-curfew even if you do not want to use the word. If, alongside this, you enforce the closure of public spaces on beaches or in parks until 6:00am, major problems will follow in the tourist-oriented municipalities which councils will solve by who knows what method. In short, bad news, at the worst time and communicated in a way that could have been much improved: with the Procicat meeting in progress and with many doubts about the small print of the measures that will need hours to be clarified.