After almost two years, the pandemic is reaching its end. Some days ago, C.Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), summarized the global situation in the journal ‘Lancet’, and after reviewing the most used indicators to epidemiological surveillance –the incidence at 7 and 14 days, the rate of transmissibility, the proportion of asymptomatic patients, hospital and ICU admissions, with and without intubation, or mortality, etc.- concluded that the time of extraordinary measures adopted by governments and society to control the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is coming to an end and, more specifically, he told us that, in his opinion, the effort to follow contacts in schools and other places such as companies is futile. That is, it is unimportant due to lack of foundation, given the intensity and speed of the omicron variant.
So it’s time to start thinking about the day after. Also for the good it is convenient to prepare. There are many things that we have learned that cannot remain on deaf ears. For example, it is clear and urgent to have a Spanish Public Health Agency, with independence and sufficient financial and intellectual capacity, to lead responses to future crises, including the climate crisis. But we are already late, because to prepare for the future we need it now in the present, to manage the transition we are already in. According to the proposal of the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (SESPAS), This state agency’s main mission is to effectively coordinate existing resources, in regional and local administrations, and in universities. It is not about inventing anything new, but about improving what already exists, making them more efficient and connecting them with European and global institutions.
A state agency whose primary function is convert data, reliable and on time, which flow between its different units, from those of sequencing and virological typing to those of analysis of citizen behavior and social policies, in useful information for decision making. Data alone is not enough, they need intelligence capable of turning it into meaningful information to act. An intelligence that must be human, not artificial, to which “goosebumps” will appear. when interpreting the meaning of the data, as it reminds us Byung-Chul Han.
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The other great lesson learned is the importance of the public. Institutions, with greater or worse fortune, have helped individuals to collaborate with each other. The compassion we feel for others has found its channel. The role played by the public, universal and quality health system is beyond doubt. The professionalism, not the heroism, of its workers has been key to dealing with the pandemic. Now is the time to redesign your structures so that you can have the necessary resources to continue to fulfill its mission serve people equitably and efficiently. But we must also value our social protection system, which has helped withstand the reduction in economic and social activity to mitigate transmission in the worst moments of the pandemic. A system that has incorporated new resources such as minimum income or ertes, whose continuity and improvement must be priority objectives for this transition in which we are entering, so that we all come out stronger, more supportive. The lived experience must serve to reduce inequalities, not to increase them. In fact, the biggest threat that hangs over us is the unequal distribution of vaccines: 77% of people with a dose in rich countries compared to 10% in poor countries. Global vaccination is a ‘sine qua non’ requirement for us to reach the end.
It is time for a rigorous evaluation of everything that has been done, and not done, in relation to the pandemic. This is an unavoidable step, which must be undertaken by independent experts. It depends on their analysis and conclusions that the effort made by everyone has been worth it. Learning is the most important thing left to us after all experience, and this one has been huge. Let’s prepare the future.