San Marino. “New Covid Decree: overcoming the emergency to restore full operation of health services”
“On Thursday morning, the CSU was invited by the Secretariat of State for Health to participate in a video-call meeting, which aimed to get to know the students of the Government on the new, yet another, Decree concerning the Covid emergency”.
This is the appeal that comes from the CSU.
“During the meeting, the now well-known differences of views with respect to the approach of the new legislation – which will have value until the end of January – emerged to avoid the strong and worrying growth of infections and the consequent impact on our healthcare.
The CSU reiterated that the priority objective must be to limit the spread of the virus as much as possible and, consequently, the number of infections and hospitalizations. In fact, it is not acceptable that the number of hospitalized for Covid is exponentially higher than in neighboring Italy: as a percentage it is now 3 times higher, with reference to intensive care.
This evolution and the pressure of the dynamics linked to Covid on our hospital and on the health system as a whole, effectively forcing those suffering from other diseases, even severe ones, to not be able to be assisted in the best way. Further critical issues related to the saturation of public health structures due to the Covid emergency are those relating to all prevention and preventive screening activities, currently zeroed, the impossibility for citizens to receive adequate and timely responses from the “Centers Health ”, the planning of specialist visits that record very long waiting times and the postponement of surgical interventions already scheduled.
The exponential evolution of infections and the simultaneous need to give impetus to the vaccination campaign regarding the third “booster” dose and pediatric vaccinations also entails very strong pressure on all health and social health personnel who, in addition to being also interested from the problem of infections, with a great sense of responsibility is doing the impossible to limit the inconvenience to citizens and guarantee an allowed level of assistance. Also for these reasons it is essential to significantly reduce the evolution of infections and especially hospitalizations.
Last December, taking into account the foreseeable evolution of the health emergency, the upcoming holiday period and to safeguard public health, on the occasion of the presentation of the guidelines of the Covid decree being issued, the need for an approach decree was served to the Government stricter than the legislation for the protection of the community and to limit infections, taking into account the new Omicron variant. On that occasion, considerably more difficult measures were adopted, supporting the orientation of a part of the policy inclined to minimize interventions for mainly economic reasons: the practical results are there for all to see, with the health of the country that is further aggravated.
From what has been learned during the meeting, it would seem that the measures that will be adopted are much less incisive than those adopted in other European countries, including neighboring Italy. Compared to what is in force across the border, the Government has presented a comparison table between what is foreseen in Italy and what is foreseen to be applied with the new Covid decree, underlining that – despite the numbers of the ”- the envisaged approach aims to be less invasive in any case and limited to just the last two weeks of January, except to intervene in the event of a further increase in infections and hospitalizations.
The CSU, while not entering into the merits of technical-scientific evaluations, by experts, and political, which belong exclusively to the Government, stressed the need to restore normalization as soon as possible to the normalization of health, prevention, specialist services and those linked to hospitalizations and interventions for other pathologies. Furthermore, a necessary reflection was made with respect to the possible misalignment of Covid regulations between Italy and San Marino: it appears all too evident that the “soft” approach is more motivated by mainly economic logic, in particular of some sectors. It is equally clear that the strong misalignment of constraints and Covid compliance with what is expected in other countries, would place our country in a situation of potential criticality, not least that resulting from a further increase in the risk of contagion and criticality of health services related to greater flow of forensic people in the territory.