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If you live in Spain, grabbing a mask before heading out is probably second nature by now.
Wearing a face mask in public has been mandatory since May 2020, with a few exceptions such as while eating or drinking at a bar or restaurant, or when doing sports outdoors in some places.
Buying mascarillas has become part of our weekly shop, they’ve been turned into fashion accessories and spotting someone without one is ‘weirder than a green dog’ as the Spanish say (más raro que un perro verde).
READ ALSO: What you need to know about Spain’s restrictions on cloth face masks
But after ten months of sweaty mouths, steamed up glasses and impossible lip reading, some of you may be wondering when the use of facemasks won’t be mandatory anymore and we’ll all be able to breathe fresh air again.
When will mask usage no longer be mandatory in Spain?
“When a considerable proportion of our population has been vaccinated,” writes the Spanish government on its Q&A page.
With the current pace of vaccination this could happen by the summer, according to virologist Margarita del Val, head of Spain’s National Research Council.
“We’ll have much better weather in the summer, with which the probability of being infected is ten times lower,” she told online daily 20 minutos.
“In addition, our vaccination campaign will be much more advanced and there’ll be more information on how vaccines work, with which we will see things differently,” Del Val wanted to point out.
Although there’s no exact date yet for when there will be changes to facemask laws, once over-40s and professionals who are at risk of being infected have been vaccinated, an easing is expected.
That doesn’t mean either that there will be a blanket lifting of mask usage in all places and situations, nor that those who have received the Covid-19 vaccine will be exempt from wearing masks as they can still be carriers.
A drop in infections due to a more advanced vaccine rollout, people respecting current and future restrictions and self-isolation measures for those infected are all factors that can all play a part in how fast mask usage is phased out.
“There are still quite a few months left,” Del Val concluded, adding that clearing the air in poorly ventilated indoor spaces “is not something we’re doing well”.
Could it be that not wearing a mask outdoors will be allowed first but we’ll have to keep wearing it indoors in shops and bars?
Perhaps, but what matters to Spanish epidemiologists is that the 70 percent immunisation target is met first, which according to government estimates will fall in the summer.
“Social distancing measures, hand hygiene and the use of facemasks could be scrapped at a generalized level if this happens,” Spanish Epidemiology Society (SEE) told medical journal Redacción Médica.
“Although it is possible that according to the information available at that time, the Spanish government continues to recommend such measures in very vulnerable groups.
“If the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not be controlled and its transmission was maintained at significantly high levels, these measures would have to be maintained ”.
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