The Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, said this morning that there are currently more than 1,500 military personnel engaged in tracking tasks after the Autonomous Communities have increased their requests for collaboration in recent days due to the growth of Covid- 19.
Robles made these statements during a visit to the trackers of the Epidemiological Surveillance Unit (UVe) of the Parachute Brigade located at the ‘Base Príncipe’ of Paracuellos del Jarama, activated last week by the Army at the request of Castilla-La Mancha , in which she has seen first-hand the work of these soldiers.
“As a consequence of Omicron, the number of infections has recently skyrocketed and that has made the Autonomous Communities ask us to increase the number of military trackers,” said the minister, who has stressed that the best protection against contagions is vaccination.
In this sense, Robles has reiterated to the Autonomous Communities the offer for military health to help accelerate the rate of vaccination. For this, she said that the Armed Forces already have 150 mobile teams made up of three or four people, “willing to go to vaccinate wherever the Autonomous Communities ask us to do so.”
“The military want to support this effort as well, with that availability and effectiveness that the Armed Forces have,” said the minister, who along the same lines pointed out that the Gómez-Ulla military hospital in Madrid and the Zaragoza military hospital, which this week will begin with the vaccination.
VISIT TO BRIPAC
During his visit to the BRIPAC Base, Robles has been informed of the main areas of action of the military trackers that make up the unit and provide support to the health system of Castilla-La Mancha, which on December 20 requested their collaboration. Following the request of the La Mancha community, three sections of the nine total have been activated, made up of a total of 97 trackers.
The interim chief of the Paratrooper Brigade (BRIPAC), Colonel Javier Betolaza, conveyed to the Minister the “absolute disposition of the brigade” to give its support to any mission entrusted to them. “Initial rapid response capability is in the DNA of all of our skydivers. We are a very light, flexible and fast response unit ”, he said in his welcoming remarks.
Subsequently, Robles attended a presentation by the head of the BRIPAC UVe, Commander Francisco Javier Spain, who assured that regarding the first waves the citizens contacted have a greater knowledge of Covid-19, while highlighting that there is a great collaboration and that most cases of infections come from the school environment.
The minister, who was accompanied by the Secretary of State for Defence, Esperanza Casteleiro, has spoken with three trackers, who have given her testimony of their daily work and have stressed that almost all the people they have contacted are already vaccinated and show a total willingness to collaborate.
The UVe of Castilla la Mancha is made up of 273 soldiers, most of whom are personnel from the ‘Almogávares’ VI Brigade of Paratroopers. Six of its sections are located at the Príncipe de Paracuellos del Jarama Base (Madrid), one at the Santa Bárbara Barracks (Murcia), another at the Coronel Sánchez Bilbao Base in Almagro (Ciudad Real) and a last one at the Air Base of Albacete.
The UVe of Castilla-La Mancha is part of the Operation ‘Baluarte Mission’, which began on September 30, 2020. Its areas of action are focused firstly on identifying contacts from a case, and then moving on to the communication with these contacts to offer them the initial instructions, and subsequently the regular monitoring of the identified cases.
The unit completed its support to said community in a first phase between October 2020 and October 2021, a period in which it made approximately 656,000 calls. In the few days since the second phase of support began, it has made almost 5,000 telephone contacts.
According to Robles, the ‘Baluarte Mission’ was about to be concluded and has had to be reactivated due to the increase in infections.
