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Coronavirus in Argentina: the illusion of the Interior falls without Covid and 15 provinces add cases daily

2020-07-10T13:04:37.427Z


They were the "oasis" of the country. They had relaxed the quarantine. But the drip infections returned steadily. And with figures much lower than the AMBA, they adjusted the insulation again for fear that the curve would trip.


Pablo Sigal

07/10/2020 - 7:00

  • Clarín.com
  • Society

An Argentina in which the problem of the coronavirus was concentrated only in the city and the suburbs . That was a problem, yes, but at the same time part of the solution, the food of the story in defense of an indefinite quarantine, a fundamental tool that the Government has proposed so far to keep the contagion curve at bay .

"85 percent of the country is in phase 5," was the official slogan to contrast the criticisms that demanded greater flexibility in isolation, so that the pocket could come out to breathe. Today, that mother idea that there is a great Argentine oasis  that surrounds the metropolitan desert is changing.

Until a few weeks ago, the growth of coronavirus cases, beyond AMBA, took place in just six or seven provinces . But this behavior of the Covid suffered a deviation until it reached the current situation in which there were between 15 and 16 the provinces that add new cases daily. This has determined that in many places it was decided to back down  on the relieved quarantine  and toughen the isolation conditions.

Despite the fact that an overwhelming part of the cases are still concentrated in the City and the GBA (more than 91 percent), in the Interior the contagions are growing by "trickle down" , in a sustained manner and no longer so focused. This means that the pandemic country of today is no longer the faithful image of that of a few weeks ago. The illusion of an "Immune Interior" begins to move away from the Covid-19.

In the parts of the last days, new cases were added by Chaco, Jujuy, Neuquén, Córdoba, Catamarca, Mendoza, La Rioja, Santa Fe, Chubut, Entre Ríos, Río Negro, Salta, Salta, Corrientes, Tierra del Fuego and Tucumán. The provinces that are better off today, without new recent reports, are Misiones, Formosa, La Pampa, San Juan and San Luis.

A good measure to see how contagions have changed in the Interior is to stop at what happened between the end of March (when the national quarantine began) and mid-May: the number of new daily cases fell, according to provincial reports, a 43 percent . Then, when the quarantine conditions were relaxed, there has been a 1,200 percent increase in the count every 24 hours to date.

The absolute number of infections, however, is obviously still low. In the part of this Wednesday, in which 15 provinces reported positive cases, there were a total of 266 cases in the Interior . And in Thursday, with 16 provinces that added infections, the total balance was 233 . Keep in mind that a holiday is usually not a good reflection of reality, with records that may lag behind due to less administrative activity.

If you compare those current numbers with those of May 10 - to put a date that alludes to another moment in the curve - it is not only seen that then there were fewer reported infections (22 in 24 hours) - something obvious from the natural behavior of the curve-, but the provinces that added new cases every day represented only a quarter of the country. Today they are almost two thirds.

The proportion of cases in the Interior, at the beginning of the pandemic, represented  32 percent of the total . Those were times when the City and the GBA still enjoyed very moderate curves. Today, Interior records represent 9.4 percent of the total . With some more worrying territories: Chaco, as is known, is the province with the most infections after the metropolitan area: it has 2,446 positives . It is followed by Río Negro, with 1,031; Cordoba, with 826; Neuquén, with 649; Santa Fe, with 480; Entre Ríos, with 376; and Jujuy, with 312.

Coronavirus in Argentina

Source: Ministry of Health | Argentina Infographic: Clarín

Then comes the platoon of provinces that registers between 100 and 300 positive cases. While the most encouraging scenarios, below a hundred, today are La Pampa, with 7 cases ; San Juan, with 9; San Luis, with 12; Catamarca, with 38; Misiones, with 42; Santa Cruz, with 57; Formosa, with 75; Salta, with 84; and Tucumán, with 87.

To see how the distribution of Covid has changed during the last months in Argentina, it is enough to stop at one fact:  on March 17 new cases of coronavirus were added in 8 provinces ; on March 25, there were already 12 that reported new infections in the report that centralizes the Ministry of Health of the Nation. And on March 29, all but three provinces added sick: the exceptions were Catamarca, Chubut and Formosa.

Then, that scenario began to change and contagions were concentrated in the provinces that today accumulate more positive cases. They are the ones with  the most densely populated capitals , behind the city of Buenos Aires and some municipalities of the GBA. Coinciding with the relaxation of the quarantine in the Interior, the indefatigable Covid put his chips back in places on the board that he had ignored for a time.

Thus, the latest tightening of the quarantine is affecting not only the metropolitan area, but several other places in the Interior that decided to tighten nuts so that the outbreaks do not shoot up. For example, Catamarca, which last week detected its first case and now has 38 positives, so it returned  to phase 1 until next Sunday.

In Salta, which in a week almost tripled its records (went from 33 to 84), circulation was limited in some departments and entry to the province was prohibited, with exceptions for essential services. In Entre Ríos (it went from 307 to 376 in seven days) they planned to set up social gatherings and group sports , but they put on the handbrake.

In Santa Fe (whose cases grew 13 percent since July 2) there are towns in phase 1 and others in phase 4. La Pampa decided to suspend circulation to and from San Luis, due to the recent appearance of a positive case in the puntana province , in whose north they decided to return to phase 1.

Santa Cruz, which since last Monday added 6 new cases after more than an undefeated month , limited the hours in supermarkets and they serve people according to the completion of the document. The Neuquén capital and its surroundings also returned to the total phase of isolation due to community transmission of the virus.

The same reality is lived in some districts of the Buenos Aires Interior that were in phase 4 or 5 and returned to phase 3 , such as Castelli, Dolores, Hipólito Yirigoyen and Suipacha. While others who were in phase 5, such as Benito Juárez, Balcarce, Chascomús, Punta Indio and Roque Pérez, returned to phase 4. A maddened rise and fall that, for now, no one dares to abandon.

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Source: clarin

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