The Spanish Council of Ministers has approved a measure to scrap indoor mask mandates as of April 20th, exactly 700 days after the measure was passed on May 20th of 2020.
Minister of Health Carolina Darias announced the end of the indoor mask mandate on Tuesday following the meeting of the Council of Ministers and argued that Spain was now in a position where it could afford to drop the mandates.
“We are in a favourable epidemiological context that makes it possible to make the use of one of the most symbolic elements of the pandemic more flexible: masks; without a doubt, motivated by the very high vaccination coverage,” Darias said, newspaper El Mundo reports.
While the indoor mask mandate will be ended in most spaces, some will still require masks, such as hospitals, pharmacies, blood transfusion centres and other areas where people who may be vulnerable to the Wuhan coronavirus could frequent.
Minister Darias also said masks would still be required on various forms of transport where social distancing cannot be maintained, including buses, aeroplanes, trains and passenger ships.
The move comes just two months after the leftist Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez scrapped the outdoor mask mandate in February that had been implemented in December of last year.
Over the course of the last two months, many European countries have lifted their mask mandates both outdoors and indoors, such as France, which dropped mask-wearing in most locations along with its health pass system for venues such as bars and restaurants.
Most European countries have dropped both their vaccine health pass requirements and mask mandates, with Greece still requiring masks be worn in some areas, but is looking to scrap the measure on May 2nd, while Italy is looking to drop the mandate on May 1st. Several other countries,s such as Belgium and Cyprus, still require mandatory masking indoors.