Coronavirus: From Ifema’s “miracle” to “Ifemazo” | Madrid

With the Community of Madrid turned into the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain, broken by more than 15,000 deaths linked to the disease, the controversy over the management of the regional Executive reaches Wednesday until Congress. “Señor Casado, at least we can hope to understand what they are doing,” asks Íñigo Errejón, from Más País. “He says you have to wear a black tie, because mourning is very important, and the situation is very serious, and then I see his party organizing the ifemazo and distributing squid sandwiches ”. This term of footballing airs tries to summarize the management of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, full of edges; marked by the resignation of the general director of public health, Yolanda Fuentes; and faced with a crisis that has exposed the deficiencies of the health system.

Because Ifema, the spectacular field hospital that cared for 3,811 patients and was praised by the World Health Organization, also raised the complaints and protests of the health workers who worked there – “disaster” and “chaos” were the most repeated words- . It was, also, the scene in which the president of the Community and the main politicians of the region met with hundreds of people, without respecting the physical distance while they distributed squid sandwiches, danced and celebrated the closure of the facility . They all ended up asking for forgiveness.

Ifema, which is also the nerve center from which more than 400 tons of medical equipment from China are distributed, houses the same warehouse that spent nine days waiting for the contents of an airplane, the first, which seemed to never arrive.

And in Ifema, “a miracle”, according to Díaz Ayuso, and “pure marketing” that undresses professionals in primary care to fill these temporary positions, according to the opposition, there is the man the president has pointed out to solve all problems : Antonio Zapatero, until now director of the field hospital.

“Why did you name a kind of Covid tsar? It is a total disavowal of what they have been doing in this crisis, “says José Manuel Freire, deputy of the PSOE and former Minister of Health of the Basque Country, about the new vice-minister. “In the Community the decisions are being made very personally by the president, she removes, she puts, but clearly she has much more interest in attacking the central government, without looking at her own problems, than in doing anything else.”

“You have to make difficult decisions, and they are not written in any manual,” says a government source. “So far, almost all have been successful.”

Zapatero is not the first signing of Díaz Ayuso. Before, he brought Antonio Burgueño, promoter of the attempt to privatize healthcare under the Ignacio González government. Then he placed Ruiz-Escudero, his health adviser, at the head of a single command. Three changes that measure the wear and tear of facing an unprecedented pandemic.

The reason? The magnitude of the crisis has affected all the pillars of the system, revealing its shortcomings. To cope with it, there were not enough beds (it had to go from 13,654 to 24,730), personnel (more than 8,000 people are hired) or infrastructure (the private must be incorporated into the effort of the public, overwhelmed). The dead have accumulated in the residences to almost 6,000, sparking an internal war in the PP and Cs coalition government. And even the successes have ended up exploiting the Executive in the face: after announcing the acquisition of 100,000 tests with a sensitivity of 92%, according to verification tests carried out at the La Paz hospital, then it turns out that these are not so reliable (79 ,4%).

“What is foolish is to treat the Community as if we were newcomers,” Díaz Ayuso snapped this Friday. “We have been a community that we have been very lonely and many times attacked,” he said, confronting the central government.

Madrid has also faced the crisis between communicative fires. “Every day there are outrages and that is not why you prohibit cars,” Díaz Ayuso said when asked if he would sleep peacefully if the state of alarm fell and all citizens took to the streets. “I do not deal with disaster,” he launched when the PSOE offered to negotiate a budget deal. “That they give a child a pizza, I don’t think it’s a problem,” he defended Telepizza’s controversial menus for the most vulnerable families, which he will eventually withdraw.

Meanwhile, the health crisis continues, and with it management challenges persist. To enter phase 1 of de-escalation, Madrid must have the capacity to go from the 17,000 beds it claims to have today to 24,750; and of the 1,350 ICU beds that it claims to now have 1,400. In addition, it must have at least 1,800 professionals to monitor the pandemic, the famous “trackers”; and take into account the casualties of the infected toilets, and the rest of the rest. A major challenge.

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