Argentina already tops a dramatic global Covid ranking before the Delta circulates

Argentina combines two variables what they do today a unique case in the world: it is the most populous country that has recorded the highest number of cases of coronavirus per inhabitant. To put it another way, among the nations of more than 20 million people, there is no other that exceeds it in the rate of infections.

The smaller a country, the higher the chances that this index will be high. Insofar as the population and territory extension are higher, the chance is lower Argentina is in this exact mathematical equilibrium which, together with the management pandemic, guaranteed this fate.

More “density” of Covid than in the United States and Brazil. More than in Spain, Italy and Great Britain. More than in Chile, Colombia and Peru. The Argentines arrived, after one year and five months health crisis, to integrate the most populous population with the largest number of infected per million in the world.

Argentina has on average just over 107 thousand cases per million inhabitants, according to the latest update from the Worldometers website. At the top of this ranking, no other country has more than 20 million inhabitants. Moreover, many of those that precede it are very small countries, of a few hundred thousand citizens.

These other nations, being among the smallest on the planet, in fact some cases of coronavirus, which means a lot for the size of their populations. At the top of the world ranking Andorra, which barely resisted 14,586 cases Covid and that’s enough to score 188,454 cases per million, given that its population is barely 77,000 inhabitants.

There are also Seychelles, Montenegro, Bahrain, San Marino, Gibraltar, Slovenia and Luxembourg. The only ones with more than 10 million inhabitants in the lead are the Czech Republic (4th), Sweden (12th) and the Netherlands (13th). On this list Argentina he is now ranked 15th. However, the population of the previous 14 countries amounts to 47.5 million people, or just over the entire Argentine population.

Brazil, whose President Jair Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic, has 92,435 infected per million and it is ranked 29th (5th among those with more than 20 million inhabitants).

United States, who went through the first part of the health crisis with the also controversial Donald Trump, adds up so far 106,543 cases per million to occupy the 16th position (2nd in the ranking which articulates the population dimension).

Britain, who at the start of the pandemic bet on the failure of “collective immunity”, suffers 84,543 cases per million and it is in 32nd position (7th when the mentioned minimum population requirement was introduced).

Argentina had during the administration of its own pandemic a policy of biological containment, quite or completely opposite to that of these countries, and yet the results to date do not conform to the initially prevailing expectation.

Thus, the longer duration of isolation (a very long quarantine in 2020 and a shorter one in the second wave of 2021) did not translate into a decrease in infections. The world average is 25,228 cases per million, It is, 76 percent less as our country’s brand.

It should also be taken into account that many nations which “compete” in this ranking are already suffering from community circulation of the most contagious variant of the known, the Delta, which should give them a statistical “handicap”.

However, the figures show that they can do without this advantage to cope, nevertheless, better than Argentina, where the Indian variant does not yet appear to have bypassed stocks of the imported cases, while the government is beating a imminent eruption.

What comes worried reasons: On the one hand, although the peak of the second wave has been exceeded, the daily case floor is not too far from what was the peak of the first wave. On the other hand, the late reaction of prioritize the latter dose leaves the most vulnerable unprotected.

In America, the only country that exceeds Argentina in cases per million population is Uruguay, which in absolute numbers totals 380,976 infections. It’s him 7.8 percent of which Argentina counts, but at the same time too numerous for its population of 3.5 million inhabitants.

This scenario, which accounts for the dramatic impact that the Covid has had in our country, has a setback which – with a dash of optimism – could be qualified as “positive”: it is the most sparsely populated nation of the world who have the highest absolute number of recoveries of Covid. They are 4.5 million.

This figure would mean (if re-infections were not taken into account) that 1 in 10 Argentines has convalescent status. Only the United States, Brazil and Turkey – with larger populations – currently have higher numbers of recovered.

In the world there is 178 million convalescents, therefore the Argentines who conquered the disease represent the 2.53 percent. Based on what its world population means (0.64%), our country has almost four times more recovered from the Covid than what would correspond to it.

Vaccination, or its deficit, has done its part to achieve this scenario of exaggerated abundance cases of coronavirus, which no one would have imagined months ago, but this time and pandemic management They started to come back predictably.

the vaccines The most effective measures to prevent contagion have so far proven to be those of messenger RNA technology (Pfizer and Moderna), with which Argentina – after widespread and costly resistance – would not start massively vaccinating – except for the emergency of minors with comorbidities – between at the end of this year and at the beginning of next year.

The vaccines available so far in the country (the Russian, one of the Chinese and the Oxford) have not shown as much efficiency like these two Americans. And even less when applied a single dose. The most effective of all those acquired by the government was Sputnik V, although the second component missing It has prevented the appreciation of its full potential to interrupt the chain of infections.

Despite the local shortage of Covid vaccines – especially during the first half of 2021 – this modest arsenal has functioned as shock absorber so that the large number of cases -the peak of the second wave almost tripled that of the first- also did not convert Argentines -in relative terms- into principal death of the world.

However, Argentina’s lethality from the coronavirus is high around the world. Only three countries of more than 20 million inhabitants exceed us proportionally in death: Peru, Brazil and Colombia. The local relationship with the world average is almost a carbon copy of that of the infected: outside the borders, there were 76.5% fewer deaths per million than in Argentina.

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