Jose Luis Satjianundersecretary of Public Health, said this Thursday that the different protocols for vaccinated and unvaccinated established by the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) are to “try to prevent the unvaccinated from becoming infected.”
Asked why activities are maintained only for vaccinated people in closed spaces when the omicron variant has also been shown to infect those who have been inoculated, the chief said that what is sought is “trying to prevent the unvaccinated from becoming infected.” “It has been shown that an unvaccinated person has a thousand more chances of ending up in an ICU or dying than a person vaccinated with three doses,” he explained, adding in an interview with Las cosa en la sitio (Radio Sarandí).
“The way to take care of the unvaccinated is that there is not so much circulation of the virus, and so that there is not so much circulation of the virus, we try to reduce infections,” he specified.
“In Uruguay, those who did not get vaccinated are because they did not want to, not because they could not,” Satdjian said, noting that the inoculation has been taken “to every corner of the country” for a year.
In turn, the hierarch pointed out that there is an evolution in the management of the pandemic, which leads to being “in a moment of evaluation” of the health emergency. In this sense, he said: “It is already apparent that we are much closer (to lifting the health emergency)”.
Protocols in education
Regarding the protocols issued by the MSP for the start of classes, which the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) and the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) decided not to follow, Satdjian commented: “We establish recommendations, but we do not have the control of educational centers to determine what can be done and what cannot, because that corresponds to the education authorities”.
The measures currently determined for education are progressive, scalable and “probably in a short time there will be a review,” he said. “We have to see how it evolves and what happens in practice, because on paper it is one thing but when we take it to the salons or put it into practice it will be another,” he added.
As the weeks go by, “a review can be carried out to see how it is being applied and if there is room to continue this path of opening,” he concluded.