One of the most important decisions Junts must make before the 2027 municipal elections is the candidate for Barcelona. Following the departure of Xavier Trias, this is one of the most important issues facing the municipal group of councilors and also within the party itself: the intention was to choose him before Easter, but municipal sources admit that everything may go slower than expected. The issue is that there is no clear candidate, despite the fact that most sources believe Josep Rius, the party's current spokesperson, councilor in the Catalan capital, and member of Parliament, is in a strong position. At least for the national leadership: he is the one who, several sources suggest, would have the confidence of former president Carles Puigdemont. However, there is a section of the party in Barcelona that doesn't see this as a possibility and supports the current group leader, Jordi Martí, who has always expressed a willingness to run. Given all this, according to what ARA has learned from several sources consulted, an internal survey was commissioned to bring science into the debate and, among the names included, is former minister Josep Maria Argimon, who joins the possible mayoral candidates for Junts.

Contagions are on the rise and Catalonia is once again experiencing a wave of covid, the seventh in just over two years. Most of the cases are not recorded because, by protocol, tests are only carried out on the over-60 and results from tests carried out at home are no longer counted. This means knowing how the pandemic is evolving is now more difficult than ever, but there is one indisputable way to identify a significant increase in infections: an increase in the number of patients seen by primary care centres and hospitals. And this is precisely what is happening. Catalan Health minister Josep Maria Argimon doubts the impact of this wave will be similar to those experienced in previous waves, but the rise in cases coincides with staff holidays, especially nurses, who are usually the most difficult positions to fill. In addition, according to primary care and hospital workers, there is limited information on the variants now in circulation, which have a greater capacity for transmission. There is no doubt, however, that the more infections there are, the more overloaded the system will be.

The days of the mask are numbered. From Wednesday it will no longer be mandatory to wear it indoors, except on public transport and in health centres. In Catalonia, primary and secondary school students will be the first to do without it since the Generalitat decided to bring forward the measure to Tuesday, coinciding with children's return to school after the Easter holidays.

Spain has surpassed 100,000 deaths due to coronavirus this Tuesday. Since the pandemic broke out two years ago, 100,037 people have died, 18,179 of whom lived in Catalonia. Updated data from the Spanish Ministry of Health indicate that just over 11 million positives have been detected, although this figure is much lower than the real figure since cases were underdetected for months and now, after the drop in cases, contacts are no longer being followed up.

"It was a risky operation, but we did what we had to do because we needed the material to protect health professionals. We had to fend for ourselves and we did not make a mistake," said Minister of Health Josep Maria Argimon, who appeared on Thursday before Parliament's ordinary health committee at his own request to defend the controversial contract for the purchase of masks and PPE from Basic Devices, signed during the first days of the pandemic. The contract was made through the emergency route for an initial value of €60m and Catalonia's Anti-Fraud Office investigated and qualified the operation as "reckless" due to the lack of solid references about the company – it was the first time it was supplying the health system – and the advance payment made to ensure the acquisition, which was finally carried out and €35m were paid. "It is always more comfortable not to take risks, but in the situation of maximum shortage and pressure on care we were in, we had to do it. We did what we could," reiterated Argimon, who was the director of the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) at the time.

The Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon, announced this Friday that the month of April can mean a before and after in the management of the coronavirus in Catalonia. If a new variant does not appear that displaces Omicron, which is more contagious but at the same time causes milder symptoms, the Department of Health will stop making the daily count of cases and, in short, will treat the covid as a flu. This will mean stopping diagnostic testing of all suspected cases and ending quarantines and lockdowns of both positives and their close contacts, which in this second case now only affects the unvaccinated. "If the disease is as it is now, fundamentally mild, it is of little interest to count case by case", Argimon highlighted.

"The cultural sector will recover 100% capacity very soon, in under two weeks". Thus spoke Catalan Minister of Health Josep Maria Argimon, this Friday morning in an interview on TV3's Els matins. Argimon added that covid passes will not be required to access premises, although masks will have to be worn at all times. "Culture is a sector that we have always tried to keep open during the second wave and the third in spite of everything," he said.

Covid contagions are already going down across all age bands in Catalonia, but this improvement won't be felt by ICU until next week, according to Catalan Minister of Health Josep Maria Argimon, who appeared before Parliament's Health commission to give explanations on how the fifth wave was dealt with. Argimon, who was self-critical on the failure to foresee the "tsunami" it has become, pointed out that the peak in admissions to ICU is expected between 3 and 4 August, with about 700 patients. This figure had not been reached since the second wave.

It is not quite over yet. The Catalan Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon, explained in an interview to the newspaper ARA with Antoni Bassas, that both this year and next Catalonia will still live immersed in the fight against covid-19. "We will clearly still be in a pandemic in 2022," said Argimon, who has clarified that this does not mean that the levels of infection or the severity of the disease will be the same as at present. In fact, he recalled that while in 2021 the virus has put pressure on the health system, last year it also claimed the lives of thousands of people.

The Catalan Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon, admitted mistakes in the management of the pandemic in Catalonia. "With these figures of contagions, we have clearly not done things properly", he told Catalunya Ràdio, also admitting he should have reacted sooner and announced restrictions. Argimon also apologised for having "contributed to the feeling" that things were already going well. "The message that we were coming out of the tunnel was not the best," he said, and also regretted that at the time did not recommend to the youngest not to leave for end-of-year trips. "I didn't think about it," he said.

The tightening of restrictions is back. The evolution of the fifth wave of the pandemic is becoming more complicated and hospitals, which have been under extreme stress for 16 months, are beginning to be overwhelmed. The minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon, has regretted that Catalonia is living "an explosion of cases" in the last two weeks and the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, has said what nobody wanted to hear: "Things are not going well at the moment. We will take new measures". The new restrictions will be announced between tomorrow and the day after tomorrow

For some weeks now the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been announcing that this second quarter they will be able to distribute up to 300 million doses of vaccines against covid-19. After the fiasco of the first quarter, and the European Union's loss of prestige and credibility as a negotiator due to the shortage of vaccines and the slowness of the process, the commission has started to authorise new facilities to manufacture vaccines more quickly and also make more purchases from companies that have already been authorised. Thus, it was already expected that from April the pace of vaccination could be accelerated and the number of doses received would double or triple compared to the first three months of the year. This Tuesday the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, appeared at a press conference after the Council of Ministers to explain the good news, to point out the "success" of the European strategy and to promise that by the end of the summer, 70% of the Spanish adult population would have been fully vaccinated. In fact, he even specified a schedule according to which he expects to have 5 million Spaniards vaccinated by May 3, 10 million in early June, 15 million by mid-June and 25 million by July 19.

The secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon, and the president of the Barcelona College of Doctors, Jaume Padrós, have assured that Catalonia would have 6,000 or 7,000 more deaths if it had acted as the Community of Madrid, governed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has done. In a conversation with Antoni Bassas, the two doctors have highlighted the differences in the management of the pandemic between the two communities and have assumed that mistakes have also been made in Catalonia. Argimon took advantage of the interview with the ARA to announce that this Friday "between the morning and the afternoon" 160,000 AstraZeneca doses of the million vaccines that Spain has received will arrive in Catalonia. "We will start administering them on Saturday and continue on Sunday and Monday", he explained, although he clarified that no vaccines will be inoculated on Friday. When the doses are delivered, the Health Department needs a certain margin of manoeuvre to check the batches, make new citations, defrost the vials and distribute them.

This Thursday, at 10 am live at Ahora, Antoni Bassas interviews Dr. Jaume Padrós and Dr. Josep Maria Argimon because they have just published the book '2 doctors and 1 pandemic. Life and what surrounds it'.

The temporary and precautionary suspension the AstraZeneca vaccine will not stop the vaccination campaign, because doses of Pfizer's and Moderna's will continue to be administered, according to the Secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon. Nevertheless, Argimon defended the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which on Tuesday re-emphasised that the benefits of AstraZeneca's vaccine outweigh its possible risks and adverse effects that it can generate. In this sense, Argimon stressed that the immobilisation of the vaccine has been decided by governments and not by the regulatory agency. "AstraZeneca has administered 17 million doses, 6 million in the European Union and 11 million in the United Kingdom, and 14 adverse events have been observed, 11 and 3 respectively," explained Argimon, who considers that this means less than one adverse effect per million cases and that it is "expected" even outside the context of vaccination.

The department of Health is looking for "emblematic" spaces for when the vaccination enters its massive phase, and among these is the Camp Nou. This has been confirmed by the secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon, who in an interview to Catalunya Ràdio has said that they have already had some conversations with Barça but that it will be necessary to wait for the elections at the club to speak with the new president and to polish the details. The vaccination point, he said, would be a space within the facilities of the field but outdoors. The Camp Nou, in fact, will become a polling station on Sunday for the first time, since the need for space between voters has led Barcelona City Council to choose new locations.

The secretary of Public Health and director of the Institut Català de la Salut (ICS, the Catalan Institute for Public Health), Josep Maria Argimon, took the lead in the strategy to deal with the coronavirus at the end of July last year. Six months later, he takes stock of the various aspects linked to the covid pandemic.

On January 4, the Government announced a tightening of measures to bend the covid curve throughout Catalonia. The Christmas holidays were triggering the number of positive cases and Procicat (the body in charge of reviewing and applying restrictions against covid-19) decided to apply new restrictions from the day after the Epiphany, January 7th. In recent weeks the measures have been lengthening and, as explained by the Secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon, the bulk of the restrictions will still remain longer and will go beyond the date on which they expire, on February 7th. Argimon has explained to TV3 that, given the current epidemiological situation, his clear commitment is to continue to maintain the limitations of mobility and social interaction. "If there are outbreaks with the current data, it will be a problem in the ICUs. We will have to stay with restrictions for a while longer. I will bet on lengthening them", the secretary of Public Health explained. In fact, this Friday 3,354 more positive cases have been reported, while the number of deaths in the country rises to 19,048, 113 more than Thursday. The R number remains at 0.95 and hospitalizations fall to 2,881 (-24), but patients who are in ICUs rise to 718 (+12).

The refrigerators where the Department of Health keeps the covid-19 vaccines will be empty from tomorrow. Health professionals will administer 30,000 doses between Thursday and Monday, which are all that is available as they will use the 20,000 that were kept in reserve in Catalonia. The Secretary of Public Health, Josep Maria Argimon, explained that this stock will have to be used to supply the scheduled second doses and the first for care homes in red situation, i.e. with infected residents. Even so, he admitted that for the moment it will not be possible to supply the second dose to 10,000 people who received the first dose and had to receive the second dose this week or next. "We do not think about the possibility that someone is left without," Argimon said, because the technical sheet gives a margin: the second dose must be received between 21 and 42 days after the first.