Argentina is already the country in South America with the most cases per capita

That the second wave of coronavirus hitting hard in Argentina at this point is not news. The real dimension of what is happening in the country in terms of infections is given by the world ranking: and in this list, our country has already become the South American with highest number of cases per million population.

Sharp rise in infections in past two months has pushed Argentina up 13 seats in the standings and went from 45 °, where it was before the start of the second wave, to 32 °.

In Latin America, it is only passed by Aruba (11th), San Bartolomé (12th) and Panama (22nd). And in America, it is also preceded by the United States in the standings (10th place). With its acceleration, Argentina surpassed Brazil, which now occupies 35th place in the standings.

Andorra, Montenegro and the Czech Republic they constitute the world podium of cases per million inhabitants. To this extent in terms of number of inhabitants, as its definition indicates, the population of each territory is key. For it small countries or islands with less than a million inhabitants, they tend to have higher rates.

This is not the case in Argentina. If countries with more than 10 million inhabitantsIt is only surpassed by the Czech Republic, Sweden, the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain. In other words, it would be located in the ninth place if this variable is taken into account.

When reviewing the deaths per million inhabitantsArgentina is in 25th place in the world ranking and in Latin America it is overtaken by Brazil (12th), Peru (14th) and Colombia (24th). However, there is a risk that Argentina keep going up of the increase in deaths from Covid which has also been recorded in recent weeks.

One indicator of this danger is the number of patients currently in intensive care by Covid: Argentina is the fifth country in the world with the most seriously ill patients. Already exceeded 6,000 (67% more than the record of the first wave) and it is only behind Colombia, the United States, Brazil and India.

The severity of the moment is also reflected in the number of cases and deaths per million population Daily. In other words, not in the accumulated photo but today. Argentina in dead lies these days the third in this area, surpassed in the world today only by Uruguay and Paraguay. While in cases per million it is Monday, behind Uruguay.

Why does Argentina find itself in this situation again? so delicate? There are two main reasons: on the one hand, you have never been able to anticipate the waves. In other words, having tested more when cases had dropped over the summer, to isolate the newly infected and avoid making the wave bigger.

On the other hand, the vaccination campaign – which does not guarantee total immunity but reduces the occupancy rate of hospitals – is progressing much slower than expected: At the end of April, the government planned to have 31 million doses, but only managed to get a third.

This places our country for the first time leading coronavirus cases per million inhabitants on the continent. In absolute figures, it is in the 11th place, and there it is placed under Brazil, which with its nearly 214 million inhabitants adds around 16 million infections. The rest of the South American nations are below.

So far Argentina has been able to vaccinate 8.6 million inhabitants, of which only 2.3 have both doses. The arrival of new lots from the Covax Fund and AstraZeneca is expected in the coming days, which could speed up the vaccination campaign.

In this test and dose deficit scenario against the coronavirus, the government has been forced to vote again on the strong closure of activities which started this weekend. A confinement (in principle of 9 days) which immediately recalls the specter of the hard quarantine of 2020, when vaccines in the world were still a project.

PS