Redaccion
Antonio Zapatero is one of the individuals who best understands the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Madrid. His role as Deputy Minister of Healthcare and Public Health of the regional government put him in charge of many decisions regarding the control of the coronavirus that have become historic. Now, five years after the start of that pandemic that changed the entire world, we wanted to reminisce with him about those difficult and tense moments.
«There is little left of Covid now. This winter, when we were monitoring all types of admissions, there has been very little Covid. This scoundrel who made us suffer so much a few years ago… this year there have been very few Covid patients admitted. What remains of Covid is what happened, it changed the world. As a disease, it affects more immunocompromised individuals but in a trivial way, like a flu for the vast majority,» Zapatero commented in this exclusive interview with Javier Gálvez, Deputy Director of News at Telemadrid.
The vaccines have been «truly effective» and along with natural immunity, they have made Covid in 2025 «a viral respiratory inspection that does not cause much harm,» he added.
5 years of Covid in Spain, now turned into just another respiratory virus
After his prominent role in the pandemic, Zapatero returned to the Hospital de Fuenlabrada, where he serves as Head of the Internal Medicine Department, and also to the Rey Juan Carlos University, where he is a Medicine professor. Additionally, he was appointed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo as Executive Secretary of Healthcare within the PP. Zapatero recalls that during the pandemic «Madrid did things right and the management by the Community of Madrid is held up as an example.»
The biggest success? «Many things, but for example, the antigen tests changed the management of the pandemic and it was an initiative of the Community of Madrid. The analysis of sewage, which allowed us to find out what was happening. The work in nursing homes was done very early on, to determine the immune status of patients to allow for group visits… We did things that the rest of the country was not doing,» Zapatero evaluates.
He also highlighted that the situation brought out «the good side of many people; people showed a lot of solidarity, it was spectacular.»
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Zapatero criticized that the Government was slow to act and make decisions, recalling a study from the University of Oviedo that concludes that if measures had been taken a few weeks before the lockdown, many lives would have been saved. «We lacked supplies. There had been no stockpiling of supplies. Measures were not taken or were taken late to mitigate that first wave, which was terrifying. I don’t know why they took so long to act,» Zapatero said. He also recalled several disputes between the Autonomous Communities and the central Government on what actions to take, such as the analysis of sewage or the use of antigen tests. «I experienced a Government management that was excessively politicized,» he concluded.
Antonio Zapatero was the man chosen to lead and direct the creation of a field hospital at Ifema. It was a call from the then Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, that changed Zapatero’s life. His memories of those moments are heart-wrenching, giving figures of the few available beds in hospitals while there were hundreds of people waiting for admission. That emergency center was the beginning of the «solution» and gave birth to what was called the ‘spirit of Ifema’: «Every morning there were 1,000 problems, but there were also 1,000 solutions in whatever form; we were aware that we had to try to do whatever it took to move forward. People got involved and that was crucial. We were in a tough situation but we could do things to move forward.»
And the big question that arises years later: Are we ready to face a similar pandemic? «I would like to say yes, but I have my doubts. There are things that we have made little progress on. What happened should have prompted this Government to take national level measures to ensure that everything we lacked in those terrifying weeks of February, March, April, and May of 2020 does not happen again.»
