In an announcement to the press this Monday (18), the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, detailed the planning of the portfolio in view of the end of the Public Health Emergency of National Importance (ESPIN) established in February 2020 due to Covid-19.
“There needs to be a transition so that we have a transition so that we do not have losses in health care. I want to emphasize that no public health policy will be interrupted. Absolutely none. All of them were instituted by the federal government through the Ministry of Health”, said the minister.
The classification of the disease as a pandemic is an assignment of the World Health Organization (WHO), which maintained the status last week after meeting with the institution’s emergency committee. However, countries must monitor epidemiological information to understand the behavior of the disease and establish public policies at the national level.
In a statement, the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, said that in the coming days, a normative act will be issued to discipline this decision. THE CNNQueiroga said that the ordinance should be published by this Wednesday (20) in the Official Gazette (DOU).
“Thanks to the improvement in the epidemiological scenario, the broad vaccination coverage of the population and the capacity of SUS to provide assistance, we are now able to announce the end of the Public Health Emergency of National Importance – ESPIN”, said the minister in a statement.
According to Queiroga, more than 73% of the Brazilian population completed the vaccination schedule and more than 71 million Brazilians received the booster dose.
What does the state of emergency mean?
On February 3, 2020, the Ministry of Health recognized Covid-19 as an international health emergency and raised the level of the Brazilian response to a Public Health Emergency of National Importance (ESPIN).
The measure, published in the Official Gazette of the Union, established the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (COE-nCoV) as a national mechanism for the coordinated management of the emergency response at the national level.
Among the duties of the operations center, are the articulation with managers of the Unified Health System (SUS) from all over the country, activation of health teams, including the temporary hiring of professionals, and the acquisition of goods and contracting of services under of urgency.
What changes with the end of the emergency
The decision relaxes a set of non-pharmacological measures, which are those recommended since the beginning of the pandemic for the prevention of Covid-19, including the mandatory use of masks. In addition, it changes criteria that facilitate the purchase of medical supplies without bidding. More than 2,000 administrative acts can be revoked, adapted or become permanent policy.
“When we talk about an epidemic or a pandemic, we are talking about a public health emergency. In a health emergency, we have the flexibility of some rules concerning purchase and bidding processesprecisely so that there is greater speed and can serve the population in that emergency”, explains Chrystina Barros, a researcher in health management at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
In the expert’s assessment, with the departure from the urgent nature, public policies should continue to focus on ensuring conditions for diagnosis, care and epidemiological surveillance. The researcher also warns about the caution regarding the central message that can be understood by the population with the end of the emergency situation.
“We need to be careful that by giving the alert now of an endemic disease, of a disease that is part of our daily lives rather than a pandemic, it does not lead to relaxation of surveillance measures. This cannot bring the population to relax at a time when we are still facing outbreaks and waves referring to new strains, it is still time for attention”, he highlights.
Conass defends transition period
The National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass) will send a letter to the Ministry of Health about the decision to end the public health emergency. According to the president of Conass, Nésio Fernandes, the decision requires a transition period of at least 90 days and a resumption plan, considering possible scenarios of worsening of the pandemic in the country in the next semester.
In the letter, Conass should highlight the importance of the transition period to avoid investment losses and the disruption of the health system of states and municipalities.
Difference between pandemic and endemic
Different technical names are adopted to define the epidemiological situation of a disease: outbreak, epidemic, endemic and pandemic. The nomenclatures are associated with the scope of a disease and the impacts on populations.
Epidemics are defined by the increase in the number of cases of a disease in different regions, without reaching a global scale.
“Epidemic is when a disease presents an abrupt growth, beyond what is expected”, he says. “We don’t call it an epidemic when they are seasonal diseases, such as dengue, in which cases increase every year at the same time”, explains Carlos Magno, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista).
A disease becomes a pandemic when it reaches worldwide levels. Considering the spread of a causative agent in several countries or continents, affecting a large number of people. The pandemic declaration is made by the World Health Organization (WHO), which classified Covid-19 in this way on March 11, 2020.
The concept of endemics, in turn, considers the presence of a disease recurrently in a region, but without showing significant increases in the number of cases. “When an epidemic happens constantly over time in the same place, it is called an endemic disease”, says Magno.
Outbreaks, on the other hand, are characterized by the sudden increase of a disease in a specific location, as an example, we have the Ebola outbreaks that reach restricted localities in African countries.
(With information from Basilia Rodrigues and Gabriela Prado, from CNN)
Source: CNN Brasil
