Argentina approaches 100,000 daily cases of Covid-19 after setting new record for infections

Argentina broke a new rCovid-19 contagion outbreak and is approaching 100,000 daily cases as it faces a third wave of the omicron-driven pandemic.

The country recorded a record of infections since the start of the pandemic of 95,159 officially confirmed cases on Wednesday afternoon, in the middle of the southern summer holiday season, with tourist centers full of travelers.

However, the exponential increase in cases, fueled by the rapid expansion of the Omicron variant, has not translated into the number of deaths, which on Wednesday was 52 people. Argentina has a population of about 45 million inhabitants.

“We do not have a strong impact on intensive therapies and less on deaths (…) The cases are mild or moderate and they are not putting stress on the health system,” said the chief of staff of the Ministry of Health, Sonia Tarragona, to the local radio Urbana Play.

For specialists, the official numbers do not reflect the real data and affirm that more than 100,000 daily cases have already been registered, led by the provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba and the City of Buenos Aires.

“Today’s data is above 90,000 cases formally detected with a level of positivity close to 50% (…) Today in Argentina we could be quietly in 150,000 or 200,000 cases of new infections per day,” he said Wednesday to last minute to Reuters Television the biochemist Jorge Geffner.

Since the end of 2021, the national government imposed the so-called “health pass”, which is accessed with a complete vaccination scheme and allows citizens to enter places with greater epidemiological risk, such as discos or closed places.

Given the enormous demand for tests due to the exponential increase in cases, the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT) approved on Wednesday the sale in the country of four self-assessment tests.

“It is an orientation test that allows the population that does it to be able to have a faster result and take measures based on that result, but it is indicative,” said Tarragona. “Today the demand for tests is a difficult situation and we have a bottleneck, we must leave the tests for those who have symptoms,” he added.

Argentina accelerated its vaccination campaign in recent months, which had started with the Sputnik V vaccine, then added AstraZeneca and Sinopharm and, later, CanSino, Pfizer and Moderna.

Tarragona said it does not know “what the ceiling will be,” but Geffner estimated that the peak could come in mid-January.

“No one is certain. We are speculating that the curve will begin to fall by mid-January, hopefully that is the scenario because, added to the vaccines, if we have 200,000 infected per day it would be logical that a large fraction of the susceptible population it runs out in the course of two weeks, “said the expert.