About one year after the outbreak of COVID19 in Europe, local and regional
authorities continue to play their part in ensuring the health and safety
of our citizens.
The Comunidad de Madrid, whose President Isabel Natividad
Díaz Ayuso (EPP) sits in the CoR shared two innovative initiatives via the
CoR COVID-19 Exchange Platform. The new Vigía System is an online
detection, surveillance and display system for coronavirus in the city's
wastewater. In practice the system allows to anticipate severe outbreaks at
72-hour notice – needless to say how useful this could be medical
professionals and local authorities.
It is an example, like many others on the CoR's Exchange Platform that
shows how local and regional politicians are providing quick and effective
responses on the ground, often ahead of other levels of government. Last
week the European Commission adopted a
Recommendation
precisely along these lines, asking Member States to put in place
wastewater monitoring to track COVID-19 and its variants, share the data
with competent health authorities for early detection of the presence of
the virus, and identify clusters.
The Comunidad de Madrid also shared the extraordinary experience of
building a new hospital, designed specifically for pandemics, in only 100
days. With a capacity of 1,008 hospital beds, Hopital Enfermera Isabel
Zendal has the most advanced technology and comprehensive care treatments
and is key in Madrid's capacity to combat the current and future pandemics.
Read the full story
here
(Vigía System) and
here
(Hopital Enfermera Isabel Zendal) on or mobile devises, or visit our
digital
map
on your desktop (English and Spanish).
In Portugal, Aires Pereira, Mayor of Póvoa de Varzim, shared some of the municipality's new
approaches toward building more efficient and resilient local health care
measures and infrastructures. The city extended an area of the local
hospital and set up a vaccination center which can vaccinate up to 500
citizens each day, for free. The municipality further invested more than €1
million in social cohesion policies and to accelerate the digital
transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises with a free online
marketplace. Read the story
here
if you are using a mobile device or check it out on our
map
. (English and Portuguese).
To learn more about how local and regional authorities are fighting the
coronavirus visit the
CoR COVID-19 Exchange Platform
and
Safe Vaccines for Europeans
webpage.