ALICIA ALMENDROS.- If 2020 is being an atypical year marked by the coronavirus, the Christmas holidays are not going to be any less. This time we must have one more possible guest at the table, COVID-19. “We understand all those who on these special dates meet with the family to celebrate Christmas, but we remember that caution must be exercised. A mistake can harm everyone’s health, especially that of those close to us ”, highlights Florentino Pérez Raya, president of the General Council of Nursing. In addition, the Collegiate Nursing Organization has launched a video and one infographic where he explains how to meet and behave at dinners and family gatherings these days. “The most important thing is not to go to any celebration with any symptoms, it will be celebrated on another occasion, the important thing is to safeguard everyone’s health; wear a mask as long as possible, removing only what is necessary to eat and drink; reduce the number of people and the time of the celebration; ventilate the room well and disinfect and sanitize the room well after visits ”, explains Pérez Raya.
How to act
As soon as you arrive at any house or restaurant, you have to apply hydroalcoholic disinfectant gel -important that you follow the UNE 14476 regulation- and perform proper hygiene and disinfection of the surfaces once you have finished dinner.
At the table you have to sit taking into account the distance between non-cohabitants. Once seated, each person should have their individual plate and there should be no food in the center to avoid sharing plates. Glasses and goblets must be identified. And, ideally, a single person is in charge of setting, removing and serving the table, avoiding overlapping in small spaces and breaking the security measures.
The Collegiate Nursing Organization recalls that aerosols are particles suspended in the air that can be transported by it. They are usually emitted when speaking, singing, screaming, sneezing … In closed spaces these particles remain suspended in the air so they are more likely to be inhaled by those in the room. “Therefore, it is important that the celebration does not last for a long time and in the event of a short after-dinner, you should not sing or speak loudly, you should not share your mobile or any device, you should avoid the use of noisemaker, very common on New Year’s Eve, for example, and, above all, you don’t have to give kisses or hugs with the chimes, ”says Pérez Raya.
Gifts
To cheer up Christmas for the little ones in the house, those who will not be absent this year despite COVID-19 are the Three Wise Men and Santa Claus. Of course, you have to follow the security measures when receiving the gifts: put on hydroalcoholic gel before and after opening the packages, do it with the mask on and place the gifts separately so that each person picks up their own without touching those of the rest or assign a person who is in charge of the distribution of all, especially if people who do not usually live together coincide at that time.
Compliance
So far the Ministry of Health has presented several measures for the celebration of Christmas in this pandemic situation. Restricting the number of people in meetings or the curfew at a certain time are some of the measures that the executive has proposed. “During these festivals there is a significant number of movements between territories, which is why certain habits must be modified to guarantee security and control of the pandemic. For everyone, but especially for our colleagues in hospitals, primary care and social health, it would be a very hard blow to face such a catastrophe again. For this reason, we want to remind the population again and again of the need to comply with the health recommendations to prevent further outbreaks in 2021 and for the entire population to assume the individual responsibility that corresponds to prevent it ”, affirms the president of the Colegial Organization of nursing.
Outreach campaign
These recommendations are added to all the materials that the Collegiate Nursing Organization has been disseminating since the pandemic began to help the population. How to detect breast cancer in times of COVID-19, how the coronavirus moves in the air or learn to differentiate the different tests to detect the disease, are some of them. All these materials can be found in the COVID-19 section of the General Nursing Council website.
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