The Public Health Commission has decided this Thursday to extend the third dose of the vaccine against coronavirus for people between 18 and 39. The Ministry of Health thus extends the immunisation strategy of the population towards the younger strata of society and does so in the middle of the sixth wave. Infections continue to soar and the incidence throughout the country reached more than 3,000 cases on Wednesday. However, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, already spoke of a "slowdown" in the rate of infections.

Antigen tests sold by pharmacies will have a maximum price of €2.94 as of Saturday. This is the decision taken unanimously by the Interministerial Commission on Drug Prices (CIMP) after the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Monday the executive's intention to limit the price of these self-diagnostic tests that pharmacies have been allowed to sell since July. The agreement comes after a complicated few weeks, in which there have been supply problems for many pharmacies throughout the state. "The objective is to fix a price as affordable as possible to maintain the necessary balance in the market", justified the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, in a press conference.

The Omicron variant causes practically all infections in Catalonia but its presence in hospitals is still anecdotal, especially in intensive care. In the Vall d'Hebron laboratory, for example, 93% of the samples analysed from primary care centers (CAP) show that the mutation that emerged in South Africa has replaced the delta variant in the streets, but this change is not reflected in the admission areas, at least for the time being. None of the critically ill patients currently treated at the Barcelona centre has been infected with Omicron and only one in four patients on regular wards has it. "This means that 100% of critically ill patients are infected with the delta variant, despite the fact that omicron is already the dominant variant," José Manuel Domínguez, deputy director of care at Vall d'Hebron, explained to ARA.

The exponential increase in contagions caused by the Omicron variant has forced the authorities to modify the detection and control measures. This week, the Ministry of Health agreed with the regional governments to shorten quarantines for infected people to seven days and now the next debate they will have to face is about measures in schools after the Christmas holidays. There are already some regions that have taken measures on their own and others that are still assessing them. In any case, the Ministry of Health has called a meeting on January 4 in which the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Universities, in addition to regional governments, will seek a consensus on new measures for the start of the second school term.

These days there is again some alarm about the increase in covid-19 cases everywhere. At the moment it seems they are still mainly caused by the delta variant, but in many countries we are seeing a rapid increase in cases of the worrying omicron variant. The lack of data means it is premature to make guesses at what may happen, but, from what is happening in other places and our own experience, it is vital we remain very attentive to the evolution of the virus over the next two weeks. A large increase in cases after the Christmas holidays is taken for granted. However, if preliminary reports about omicron are true, it would not be impossible for this increase to occur even earlier.

Omicron is spreading rapidly across Europe and will strain the continent's healthcare systems if social containment measures are not taken immediately. This is the stark warning issued on Wednesday by the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), which has set the level of risk to public health associated with this new variant at "very high". The main reason is its rapid spread, which will mean it will become the main variant on the continent in the next two months, according to ECDC forecasts.

Catalan Health minister Josep Maria Argimon has confirmed that suspected cases in Catalonia are infected with the Omicron variant of covid-19. The positives were identified at El Prat airport on their arrival from South Africa.

Omicron variant could have been circulating in Catalonia for a fortnight, according to the Department of Health's analysis of wastewater. And what most worries health authorities is not so much whether it causes more severe infections, but whether it facilitates infection and has more ability to circumvent the protection afforded by vaccines. "We assume that it has greater transmission capacity and that it could escape [vaccine-induced immunity], although it has not been proven reliably, but virulence is not an aspect directly related to the spike, the mechanism that allows the virus to infect the cell," explained Tomàs Pumarola, head of the microbiology service of Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron Hospital.

The microbiology service of the University Hospital of Bellvitge has not yet finished sequencing the samples of the two suspected Omicron cases identified at El Prat airport, arriving from South Africa via Amsterdam. It has not been able to determine whether they contain the mutations of the Omicron variant. However, the Catalan Health Department admits that the most plausible outcome, expected by health authorities after the first case in Spain was recorded in Madrid on Monday, and the second on Tuesday, is that the two have been infected with the virus originating in South Africa. "The department cannot yet confirm 100% that the two suspected positive cases are of the Omicron variant, but preliminary results indicate that they could be," the Health Department wrote in a short statement. The Government's predictions are that the sequencing will be finished by the end of the week and the final results will be known on Friday. Also on Friday the additional restriction planned by the Generalitat in the short term will come into force: the reactivation of the mandatory use of the covid pass to access bars, restaurants, gyms, care homes and nightlife venues.

The microbiology service of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid has reported the first confirmed Omicron case in Spain this Monday afternoon. Madrid's Health Department explained the 51-year-old man, who arrived in Madrid from South Africa on November 28, having made a stopover in Amsterdam, is "well with mild symptoms".