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  • Covid-19: The pandemic strikes the slums, putting Argentina in the face of its structural weaknesses

Buenos Aires is heading for the world quarantine record in a strange context: the 20,000 cases of Covid that Argentina reached this week are similar figures to those of Castilla y León, although with five times fewer deaths. Why then such a strict quarantine? The president, Alberto Fernández, explained it when announcing that the country will move from now on at two speeds.

"Only 15% of the country has community broadcasting," the head of state said Thursday night. And that 15% is concentrated in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area and a couple of other cities. Argentina lives in quarantine since March 20 and shows 20,197 cases and 615 deaths. In most of the provinces and localities there are almost no new cases, but in the most affected areas the strict quarantine will continue until June 27 and will continue, everything indicates, after that date. It's 101 days , and counting.

"The result of Argentina is an interesting result," added Fernández, stressing that the country has 12.5 deaths per million inhabitants and compared that figure with those of Spain, Chile, Brazil, the United States and other countries.

"We are going to support preventive and compulsory social isolation in all places where there is community circulation of the virus. And the rest of the country is going to come out of social isolation and is going to enter a stage of preventive and compulsory social distancing," said the chief. of State during a press conference in which, as usual, he shared the stage with the opposition Horacio Rodríguez Larreta , head of government of the city of Buenos Aires, and with Axel Kicillof , a Peronist like him and governor of the province of Buenos Aires .

"We have to understand that we did not overcome the problem," insisted Fernández. Those words reveal the difficulty that the Government is having in convincing part of the public that the worst is yet to come. The successive failed predictions about when the peak of the case curve would arrive - mid-April, early May, late May, early June ... - created in many citizens the impression that this peak will never come. And the figures, which continue to mark a minimum occupation of intensive care beds , also contribute to disbelief.

For many, the most important figures are not those of Covid, but those of the economy, whose immediate reactivation is a growing demand. An example is that of the automotive industry: Argentina is one of the 20 countries in the world that manufactures vehicles, but in April not a single one of the production lines came out.

Thus, they do not miss the April figures, although they shake rulers and ruled. Industrial production fell 33.5% that month compared to the same month of 2019, a decrease of 13.5% in the first quarter of the year. Construction collapsed even more sharply, 75.6% compared to April 2020.

In the midst of that context, Rodríguez Larreta gave a signal to the three million inhabitants of the country's capital: he authorized the opening of certain shops and the possibility of running and cycling between eight at night and eight o'clock the morning. Many porteños celebrated the announcement, despite the fact that the city and the country are entering the harshest stage of winter, one more reason for the endless quarantine of Buenos Aires and its surroundings to continue spreading.

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  • Alberto Fernández
  • Argentina
  • Covid 19
  • Coronavirus

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