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Date Published: 13/08/2020
ARCHIVED - Galicia and the Canary Islands ban smoking in public areas due to Covid risk
Many other regions are considering adopting the same measure and calls are growing for this to be become a national ban
On Wednesday the Xunta de Galicia, the Galician regional Government, decided to ban smoking in the streets (in open public areas) and on the terraces of bars and restaurants as part of measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
By Thursday the Canary Islands had decided to follow their example and also introduced the same ban, and the regions of Andalucía, Madrid, Castilla y León, the Valencia Region, Catalonia, Cantabria and Castilla la Mancha all announced that they too were studying the idea and would possibly adopt the same measure.
The topic of whether smoking increases the risk of both transmitting the virus or increases the chance of a smoker suffering more acute symptoms(or dying) has been one of constant debate, certainly since de-escalation began and bars and restaurants once again became the shared territory of both smokers and non-smokers.
The Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (Separ) believes that smoking in public areas where social distancing is not possible should be banned at a national level by the Spanish government, their opinion being that the smoker is constantly touching (his) mouth and nose with (his) hand, which facilitates the entry of the virus into the respiratory system, and produces a greater exhalation of so-called Flügge droplets. These respiratory particles, invisible to the human eye, are expelled when speaking, sneezing, coughing or breathing. They can remain, according to Separ, suspended in the air for 30 minutes and can travel two meters.
The Spanish Society of Epidemiology has warned that the consumption of tobacco in outdoor spaces "puts both smokers and non-smokers at the risk of becoming infected with Covid-19."
A number of medical societies and citizen’s associations across Spain have signed a manifesto in which they demand an emergency royal decree to ban smoking in the hostelry sector. "If the population is obliged to wear a mask when leaving home, smokers cannot be exempt from fulfilling their part in the collective effort," argues Raquel Fernández, president of the Non-Smokers association, promoter of the document.
Other bodies argue against the ban, but the overwhelming response from the autonomous communities is in favour of the ban, although Madrid has already said that it must look carefully at other legislation such as the tobacco legislation already active within the region to see if there any potential legal minefields to which it could be exposed by implementing a full or partial ban.
The Madrid region currently “recommends” no smoking on terraces, but this is a step further.
There is little doubt amongst the scientific community that although it has yet to be proven whether smoking increases the chances of contracting Covid, there is a “statistically significant association between smoking status and primary endpoints of admission to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), ventilator use or death” as summarised by the WHO.
Studies undertaken in relation to this subject do seem to indicate that smokers are at an increased risk of suffering more serious effects should they become ill with covid, than non-smokers.
Autonomous regions taking their own decisions
This is another example of how the autonomous regions of Spain are taking responsibility within their own regions to try and limit the spread of Covid-19.
There has been considerable mis-information spreading amongst the ex-pat community this last week due to the irresponsible publishing of articles claiming that Spain is about to go into a second lockdown due to the rising number of cases.
Many non-Spanish speakers are still failing to understand that the complicated political and administrative structure of Spanish Government gives considerable power to each of the 17 regional autonomous governments, each of whom controls their own regional health service and run their own region via an elected regional parliament.
The state of emergency was declared in order to try and clamp down on the spread of Covid, reacting to an immediate and extraordinary situation, and co-ordinate an emergency response and was done in full collaboration with the regional governments, each extension agreed with the regions and negotiated through a series of specific conditions and compromises.
The regional governments are extremely reluctant to even consider a return to that situation and continue to work at a local level adapting their decisions to suit the particular circumstances in their own regions.
Each region is at liberty to impose its own restrictions and manage the virus at a local level and there are now so many outbreaks and so many different restrictions across the regions, that unifying them all would be an almost impossible task.
By now, the economic impact of a hard lockdown has also made the prospect of another across-the-board lockdown a remote possibility and the growing realisation is that we all just have to accept where we are, work together in order to limit the spread of the virus and find ways in which businesses can co-exist with the virus until vaccines become available.
It is certainly possible that some regions will impose harsh restrictions this autumn based on their own situations and in the full understanding of the economic implications at a regional level, indeed today the Basque Country said publicly that it was considering such a move due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the region, but this will be the decision of the regional government and not the national.
Lockdowns will be generally highly localised, with specific restrictions relating to buildings, companies, individual businesses or residential areas and courts have issued dozens of such orders across the country during the last 2 months.
What is happening is that the regional governments are looking at the initiatives developed in one region and adapting them for use in another based on how successful the measures seem to be.
The imposition of masks was one such example; Catalonia started a wave which within a week had spread across Spain and was adopted by all regions except the Canary Islands and Madrid. Madrid finally succumbed last week and today the Canary Islands has announced that it too, will be imposing the mandatory use of masks in public areas as well as limiting group sizes, and limiting nocturnal leisure activities due to the growing number of cases in the islands.
Other measures are being announced daily; today for example the Basque Country has said that it is studying re-implementing harsh measures at a regional level similar to those during the state of emergency having registered 569 new cases in the last 24 hours.
Navarra has today said that it is limiting the number of people allowed to attend religious services and events such as weddings.
The Balearic islands is planning large-scale tests in the worst-affected areas and is limiting the size of groups allowed to gather after registering 228 new cases in the last 24 hours.
And more restrictions at a regional level will follow as the number of cases grows nationally, potentially including the smoking ban elsewhere.
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