Reacción a "Reaction to the new Spanish covid-19 prevention and control strategy"

I think we have to distinguish how this change affects COVID-19 surveillance and monitoring, which are different. 

On the one hand, in terms of surveillance, it will mean that the total number of cases will no longer be as comparable to other times in the pandemic. However, at no point in the pandemic have we ever detected 100% of asymptomatic cases because our surveillance system was not up to it. Although at some points we have come close to very high detections, in the sixth wave we were already applying de facto detection only of symptomatic cases because of the inability to diagnose everybody. I do not think this is extremely dangerous for surveillance because the other indicators (incidence in vulnerable groups, hospital occupancy...) will not be affected by this change, and it is part of a transition in the more global public health surveillance system. 

In terms of control, it is true that the lack of isolation for asymptomatic individuals presents a potential risk of increased transmission, or difficulty in controlling transmission. However, isolation and quarantine as a pandemic control strategy has limitations, both because of the ability to reach everyone, and because the quarantine part was no longer in place. By this I mean that the effect on transmission is likely to be small, but it will have an effect. 

I think that, in short, this change should be seen as a transitional process to make surveillance and control sustainable over time. We cannot live in public health services in constant emergency, and I think these changes are more about making surveillance and control of covid-19 sustainable in the medium term and not about forgetting the pandemic. But for it to really be a shift towards sustainability and not towards abandoning pandemic control, we have to be aware that there are many more control tools that can be at hand in case they are needed.