RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina started this Saturday a new stage of restrictions adopted to face the second wave of covid-19, after the President, Alberto Fernández, extended until June 25 the measures that since the beginning of May establish which activities cannot be carried out according to an epidemiological traffic light.
With this new measure, the Executive no longer ordered additional confinements to those established for nine days since May 21 and last weekend.
For the Government, the result of these harsh measures to reduce circulation is that there is now a drop in the number of infections in several districts. However, it warns that some 7,500 people are still hospitalized in intensive care.
“This is far from being overcome,” said Saturday the Chief of Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, to Radio Mitre.
“We must continue to take care of ourselves because, if not, we are going to return to a new wave of contagions,” he added.
Since April, Argentina has been going through a dizzying increase in the number of cases of covid-19, with an increasing level of occupation of beds in intensive care units.
In recent weeks, the country has been leaving behind the daily record of cases that occurred on May 27, when 41,080 infections were reported, and deaths, which occurred on May 18, with 745 deaths on that day.
However, the percentage of occupancy of intensive care beds for all types of pathologies, which is 77.8 % at national level, remains unchanged.
RESTRICTIONS AND FEWER FLIGHTS
The presidential decree establishes the continuity of four health risk situations – low, medium and high risk and epidemiological alarm – to divide the country’s districts, based on three parameters: the increase in the number of infections, the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and the percentage of occupancy of intensive care beds.
According to the regulation, in areas at high epidemiological risk, no traffic will be allowed between midnight and 6:00 a.m., cinemas, theaters, and gymnasiums, among others, will be suspended, and limited capacity and opening hours for restaurants will be established.
For the areas under “alert”, traffic will only be allowed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., classes will be suspended, as well as religious and cultural activities, public transportation will be restricted to essential personnel, shopping centers will remain closed, gastronomy will be limited between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following day, and group sports will be prohibited, among other measures.
Throughout the country, group travel, social gatherings of more than 10 people, and the attendance to work of people with risk factors were suspended.
On Saturday, the Government accompanied the restrictions with a regulation limiting passenger flights to avoid “the risk of introducing new variants, even more transmissible”.
It established a 20% reduction in the frequency of flights to and from European countries. And it maintains the suspension of direct flights to and from the United Kingdom, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Turkey, and countries of the African continent and from Brazil, Chile, and India.
RELIEF IN POPULATED AREAS AND VACCINES
However, in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, the most populated area of the country, which shares the capital city and some 40 municipalities of the province of Buenos Aires, restrictions were relaxed, and activities will be restricted between 11 pm and 6 am the following day.
However, in provinces such as Córdoba, where 4,360 positive cases were recorded on Friday, and Santa Fé, which reported 2,416 the previous day, the increase in the number of cases is a cause for concern, and restrictions continue.
Given this scenario, the Argentine Government hopes that new doses will arrive in the country to continue with the vaccination campaign at the end of last December.
This Saturday, official sources announced that 811,000 doses would arrive from AstraZeneca, at 20.35 local time, on an Aeromexico flight, which would be the first shipment released from Mexico of the vaccine produced in Argentina and packaged in that country.
According to official data released on Friday, 16.1 million doses have been administered so far out of a population of some 45 million inhabitants.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Argentina has accumulated 4,093,090 positive cases and 84,628 deaths.