BREAKING NEWS: Spain’s Health Ministry Announces That an Exercise Timetable Will Be Established To Avoid Saturation in Busy Areas like Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca

THE ministry has responded to the worries of autonomous communities about the agglomeration of people who will all go out to exercise at similar times, and therefore the central government has agreed to establish a timetable which with separate hours for ‘runners,’ elderly people, and children.

Finally, the government has stated that there will be time slots to organise the departures of individuals and avoid crowds. The Ministry of Health has listened to the proposals of the autonomous communities and has decided that, starting from this weekend May 2, when adults will be authorised to take walks and do street sports, shifts will be established for ‘runners,’ the elderly and children.

The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, participated in a meeting held today by the technical committee for de-escalation, led by the Chief Executive, and in one yesterday held with the regional councillors, who have been providing him with proposals on how to organise the departures allowed to avoid the concentrations of people from this weekend. The autonomous communities have already expressed their worries about using the province as a unit of measurement for decompression in the de-escalation programme.

The de-escalation committee decided that according to the data that “shows the favourable evolution of the pandemic in Spain, time slots will be issued for the population’s exercise and will begin to function starting on Saturday,” said Moncloa in a statement.

Illa was going to explain in the morning, at a press conference in Moncloa, the scope and details of the ministerial order that will determine that shift system, but a delay in the appearance has caused him to cancel it and instead go to Congress, to attend the Health Commission. Therefore, he will outline these time slots later in the afternoon.

Last Monday, at the meeting of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (SNS), several communities agreed that it was necessary to divide each day into slots for the weekend, in which they will include the departures of children, the walks by adults – including the elderly, a very vulnerable group – and the possibility of doing sports. The scheme that was enunciated was that the ‘runners’ would exercise early and late in the day whilst older individuals would go out in the morning and the youngest ones in the afternoon.