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In a period of seven months, Argentina went from being a role model in the fight against the new coronavirus pandemic to being among the five countries in the world with the highest number of infections (last Monday it exceeded one million).
Amid harsh attacks by the opposition to the government of President Alberto Fernández, which reached 80% approval in the first months of the year and today ranges between 40% and 50%, epidemiologists debate what went wrong in the strategy of Pink House. Experts interviewed by GLOBO pointed to the lack of tests, excessively long quarantines and politicization of the pandemic.
The scientific committee created by the government has been the target of strong questions. One of its main members, Omar Sued, president of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases, lamented the impossibility of having a “great national agreement” on the implementation of sanitary and social measures. Until July, 95% of the cases were concentrated in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (Amba).
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When the virus began to circulate in the “towns of misery” of the region (the very poor communities), the contagion and death curve that had flattened dramatically. The government announced the return to phase 1 (the first quarantine was implemented on March 19), but this time, the adherence of the population was around 40%.
At the same time, the virus spread throughout the interior and many state governments, allies and opponents of Fernández, refused to follow the guidelines of the national government in the face of social fatigue and the collapse of the economy.
Today provinces such as Jujuy, Santa Fe, Mendoza, Neuquén, Salta and Tucumán are in a critical situation, with their hospitals, in some cases very precarious, overcrowded.
“At the critical moment, when we needed unity, politicians lacked responsibility,” Sued criticized.
The infectologist admitted that when the curve shot up “there was an exhaustion of the quarantine speech”:
“Many governors and mayors were afraid to impose strict measures,” he said.
Last Monday, 451 deaths were registered in the National Health Surveillance System (SNVS) and the total number of deaths registered at the national level reached 26,716. The mortality rate in relation to confirmed cases is 2.7% and the death rate from coronavirus is 579 people per million inhabitants.
For more than a month, Argentina has been, according to the European Centers for Epidemiological Control, the country with the highest number of daily deaths per million inhabitants, with around eight. According to the specialized site Our World In Data, the Czech Republic with about 5, Israel with just over 4, Colombia with just over 3, Spain with about 2.5, Mexico with 2.43, Brazil with 2.4 and Bolivia with 2.17.
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The lack of control of the pandemic in the interior explains, to a large extent, why Argentina has become one of the most affected countries in the world. In the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, 92% of commercial activity has been unleashed and schools and universities have begun a gradual return. Fernández has no political room to toughen up again and his scientific committee, Sued admitted, is already thinking about how to protect the country from a second wave of Covid-19, possibly in the summer months.
Three pillars
Experts such as Roberto Debbag, vice president of the Latin American Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, question the low number of tests and the lack of follow-up of positive cases.
– Seven months after the first quarantine, we are above rank 60 among the countries that test the most per million inhabitants. We try to diagnose, not to isolate – criticized Debbag.
For the infectologist, the three pillars of an effective response to the pandemic are isolation tests, the use of masks and social distance. In an Argentina where the poverty rate reached 40%, isolation measures were impossible to comply with for the most vulnerable sectors that, in most cases, depend on the informal labor market.
– Rigid quarantines serve to prepare health systems, in that sense it was good. But in Argentina it became too widespread and produced side effects, including mental disorders, inattention for other diseases and a catastrophic economic impact, Debbag said.
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Doctor Daniel López Rosseti, coordinator of the Stress and Health course at the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA), said that he was treating more and more cases of mental and cognitive disorders, a consequence of social closure.
– I usually make a comparison with drugs that have therapeutic and toxic doses. Quarantines are therapeutic and help contain transmission, the question is how to manage them. When they are very long, as in Argentina, it is like a toxic dose of the drug – concluded the specialist.
The Fernández government tries to avoid comparisons with other countries, blames the opposition and governors who do not accept to adopt isolation measures, and has enormous expectations about the arrival of the vaccine. But the 80% support for the president remained in the past and today his government lives with protests and an economic and social crisis that, for many analysts, will be worse than the one experienced in 2001 and 2002.
