Coronavirus in Argentina: La Matanza waits with tension for the peak of the supervirus: "The worst is yet to come"

Guido Braslavsky

05/31/2020 - 13:56

• Clarín.com
• Politics

As in the entire metropolitan area, the threat of the supervirus hangs over La Matanza, the most populous district in Argentina, with its 2.4 million inhabitants in more than one and a half times the surface of the Federal Capital.

The “fifth province” in inhabitants, although it is the Buenos Aires district with the highest number of total infected, more than 600 to date, has only 27 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, below the conurbation average.

Since the cases in Villa Azul and Itatí (in Quilmes and Avellaneda) skyrocketed, the focus has been on villas throughout the suburbs and La Matanza has 114 villas, popular neighborhoods and settlements, in which 220,000 people live , in Matanzas wide geography that goes from urban San Justo to rural areas of Virrey del Pino where soybean crops are spread.

Due to the spread of Covid-19, the main concern is in the towns of the first cordon , the towns closest to the City. "Clearly there is already community circulation, and the worst days are yet to come, " they say in that territory.

Spokesmen for the municipality governing Peronist Fernando Espinoza, need to Clarin that have 350 intensive care beds which will add another hundred when you open the Favaloro hospital; There are 2,056 highly complex hospital beds between the public and private sectors plus another 4,000 isolation beds mounted in the emergency.

Espinoza was on Friday in the San Alberto de Isidro Casanova neighborhood in one of the massive tests of the Detectar plan, house by house. He said that out of 5,000 people surveyed there were only 8 suspected cases, of which 4 were negative.

Although Espinoza is optimistic, and the "flattened curve" allowed the reopening of 53 large and medium-sized factories last week , not everyone in the opposition thinks the same.

“In La Matanza there is a lot of concern, especially since what happened with the Procrear houses (the protest two weeks ago in Ciudad Evita for the use of a finished complex, to isolate families). There is no prepared health system , there is no information and Espinoza is still pending his political bid with (Axel) Kicillof ”, affirms the national deputy Hernán Berisso (Pro), from the kidney of former governor María Eugenia Vidal.

Berisso, who is from Matanzas, explains that in the second cordon (part of San Justo, Isidro Casanova, Laferrere and Rafael Castillo) and the third cordon (González Catán, Virrey del Pino) ​​“respect for quarantine is 4 points. There is a very large informal market there, people have to go out and earn the mango, and it is no small feat, 70 percent of people live there. ”

Miguel Saredi, opposition councilor, who was a candidate for deputy governor last year for the lavagnismo, integrates the health council in the emergency: "When the pandemic started, we thought it was going to be catastrophic," he says, but he is more satisfied with the size and the number of beds. He warns that on retirement days or AUH, people are crowded due to the lack of ATMs or travel by public transport to "the first cord" in their search. And that the merchants of San Justo are "on the edge".

Regarding the lack of ATMs, Berisso agrees: “González Catán has 200,000 inhabitants and 4 ATMs, and 3. There are 3 ATMs in Virrey del Pino. There were no mobile ATMs. The province government was absent in the 2nd and 3rd cord ”, he shoots.

Héctor Toti Flores, deputy of the Civic Coalition and social reference of the La Juanita neighborhood, kilometer 27.7 of route 3 in Laferrere, at the end of the second cordon, affirms: "The isolation here is difficult to achieve, perhaps 7 people sleep in One piece, people are walking on the street. There is a lack of testing, we do not know what is happening, "he expresses his concern.

It agrees that of quarantine, little and nothing: “The police passed and the people left again. It was said that it was a virus for the chetos and here no one came from Europe ”.

Flores highlights that the 53 companies have opened and warns of those who had jobs and no longer have to subsist. “People who worked don't want to go to a popular pot. They tell me, I have to get out, or the virus kills me or I'm starving. ”

On March 28, just days after the extensive quarantine began, President Alberto Fernández and Minister Gabriel Katopodis visited the works of the Favaloro de La Matanza Hospital

The "statelessness forever" is questioned by a now Kirchner ally, the veteran leader of the Classist and Combative Current (CCC), Juan Carlos Alderete, who was part of the Everyone's Front list and entered as a national deputy in December . “There is a very big fear, we know that the virus is running . There are settlements, many very poor houses. Many places appear on television but not where we live. "

Alderete was the leader of the “pickets” on Route 3 and was a duet with Luis D'Elía, also from Matanzas, in the late 1990s. He lives in the María Elena neighborhood he founded. He donated his last deputy diet entirely to the neighborhood health room, a subject he does not like to fuss about. He describes: “There are 1157 plots, two or more families generally live, large plots of 11 x 40, 10 x 30 and 12 x 48. Quarantine? The days are normal. People in popular neighborhoods underestimate (the virus) looks a lot and without a mask, "he says worried.

In Matanzas politics, no one denies the concern for the Puerta de Hierro neighborhood , in San Justo and one of the most vulnerable in the suburbs, as a candidate for a closure similar to that of Villa Azul. Some 320 families live there according to the Renabap. Alderete is not in favor or against the closings, but affirms that no isolation measure should be taken "without the neighborhood and without the neighbors."

The leader says he is in tune with the national and provincial governments and their "political openness", and in other municipalities with the CCC, but he shows that there are differences in the small payment. "There is a lack of coordination between the administration and social organizations. We are fighting the battle alone, "he says.

La Matanza stung to ask for help from the Armed Forces, along with Quilmes. Espinoza managed the landing of the Army in late March . They are 111 effective, in a food operation by which they cook in 7 field kitchens and distribute 24 thousand daily rations. The municipality also celebrated the arrival of 250 gendarmes to strengthen security.

From the municipality they defend that 65% of the district has sewers and more than 90%, access to the drinking water network and they assure that if the thing did not explode it is because there was “a lot of prevention” and at the beginning an exhaustive follow-up of the Covid cases -19 imported. They also accept that quarantine is carried out according to the place, because "people live day by day." Officials and opposition cross their fingers hoping that the supervirus does not leave its mark on that territory.