Rodolfo Lara
06/02/2020 - 22:14
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The province of Buenos Aires will continue with partial opening, limited, under strict protocol, in industrial activities, with a strong restriction on trade, without recreational outlets, and compulsory sanitary cords in towns and settlements compromised by the coronavirus pandemic.
This summarizes the position that Axel Kicillof will raise this Thursday for the consideration of Alberto Fernández, and the Emergency Committee of sanitarians and epidemiologists who assist the President. Earlier, the Governor transmitted part of this agenda to the Head of the City Government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who proposes greater flexibility in quarantine in the City.
Both reviewed the list of actions with the data in hand: on Tuesday there were almost a thousand contagions across the country. Of them, 488 in Buenos Aires territory and 371 in the Federal Capital . For the first time in the last month, Buenos Aires surpasses the City in the number of infected in one day. The virus manifests a displacement.
That is the epidemiological statistical support that the Government exhibits to maintain, without changes, phase 3 of the quarantine in Greater Buenos Aires.
For this reason, Kicillof sought the meeting with Larreta . The first communication in the morning was by phone. In the afternoon, the Governor traveled by helicopter to the City, and spent 75 minutes in the office of the Head of Government, in the Parque Patricios building. Both established a preliminary line of agreement to “optimize” inter-jurisdictional controls , constant monitoring of the public transport service and an integrated health system, with the participation of the Nation. The last item is consistent with one data: 43% of Buenos Aires hospital care has been destined in recent years to patients from the Province.
"We are looking for ways to make decisions that cause the least possible impact on the viral circulation," explained both administrations. "The idea is to arrive at La Rosada, on Thursday, with something agreed upon, " they anticipated in the vicinity of Larreta. They were concerned to ponder that it was "a good meeting."
Something they had advanced on Monday when they were with the chief of staff, Santiago Cafiero. "We move forward with the handbrake on," Kicillof collaborators grappled with Clarín . "We have to continue analyzing if the registry of infections this Tuesday was a sporadic jump or if they are going to continue growing at this rate," they insisted. there are conditions to relax ”.
It contrasts with the perspective of the City, where the Minister of Health, Fernán Quirós, assures that the curve of cases in that district "stabilized". The idea is to enable “low risk” activities, which includes clothing and footwear businesses and even enable running and physical activity with a bicycle.
The daily part seems to confirm the forecast. The curve does not represent a "handsaw". Quirós refers that he begins to "shoot" between 300 and 400 cases. There will be no possible return, if the same trend continues. It is Larreta's position, beyond the “collaborative spirit” demonstrated so far with the Province . Words that come out of his cabinet.
That is the difference: the Province begins to have manifestations of a certain dispersion in the action of the virus. The previous week there was an outbreak in Villa Azul, in Avellaneda-Quilmes, which forced the total isolation of 3,500 people, with police surveillance (300 troops) and a contingent of 320 paramedics in charge of testing. 60 tons of food had to be distributed. In the neighboring town, Itatí, a sanitary cord was also set up. And at 72 hours the José Luis Cabezas villa, in Ensenada-Berisso, also had a total lock for the detection of infections.
The alert comes from a verification: 1,800 settlements are installed in the Province. Without the minimum infrastructure of services. There, the formalities of isolation, the distance of one meter and a half, of grooming or other considerations are little less than impossible. Examples are plenty. In Villa Azul, the corridors connecting the neighborhood measure 80 centimeters. How to avoid contact due to transfer from one place to another? If 60% do not have a running water network, what is the required hygiene standard? It is difficult to isolate in 30 square meters where an average of 4.5 people live together.
But, concern does not end in that miserable landscape. In the Buenos Aires Interior, the pandemic also awakens. In Capitán Sarmiento, in the last weekend, he went from having no cases, and from evaluating a softening of isolation, to anxiety because an employee of the Tres Arroyos poultry farm was infected and now the factory activity has been paralyzed. All workers are under suspicion of infection. Testing is carried out.
In Necochea, due to negligence, during a clandestine baby shower, at least 20 people were infected. The intendancy decided to return to the previous phase of the quarantine.
In between, there is a strong drive from those sectors that are paralyzed by the restriction measures. In La Plata and Mar del Plata merchants press for a controlled opening of their businesses. They make demonstrations. They are on the verge of extinction, they argue. No sale and paying rents, fees and taxes "as if nothing happened".
Ninety days of quarantine multiplies the dramas.
"We understand the mental and economic exhaustion of people, but we are entering the most arduous stage of infections and we need to take extreme care to avoid" stressing "the health system," is the official exhortation.
Summarize the uncertainty. Precisely, the weakness that everyone begins to perceive and that increases the anguishes of this side of the Riachuelo.
