Government prepares DNU with new restrictions due to second wave fear and amid vaccine shortage

The national government does not admit it fully or explicitly, but the most important political and technical authorities are convinced that the country will suffer from a new wave of Covid-19 infections which very complex to face from a health point of view.

The scene is delicate Cabinet and Quinta de Olivos sources say, and they explain that the new strains of the mutated pandemic virus have caused collapses or saturation in hospitals in Paraguay, Chile, and are causing thousands of deaths a day in Brazil.

The same situation, it is analyzed, could happen again in Argentina in a few more weeks. Vaccines are scarce and will be available soon, despite the fact that Casa Rosada hopes to be able to announce the arrival of several million doses from different laboratories around the world which have already been negotiated but which still do not have an official arrival date.

One year after the announcement of compulsory detention, and after a historic economic crisis, the presidency is aware that it will be in compliance impossible to isolate a society that would no longer tolerate further compulsory sequestration. The new strategy for dealing with perhaps the strongest coronavirus outbreak is to seek consensus with governors so that with President Alberto Fernández they are adopted. new restrictive measures to try to avoid the transmission of Covid-19 from neighboring countries and other nations on other continents which, with effective vaccination plans and a diverse mass, are still suffering from an increase of thousands of new patients and death.

Official sources assured Bugle one new decree of necessity and emergency (DNU) which will include limitations that will seek to “protect” citizens as much as possible from the virulent return of Covid-19. These are restrictions that have already been accepted by the president and heads of provinces, although many of them have raised doubts and difficulties in each of their districts due to the actions promoted by Casa Rosada. Governors most unruly or angry with government are both pro-government and Formosa Gildo Insfran, and opponents, like Rodolfo Suarez, from Mendoza.

According to officials working on this new issue, the new DNU of the pandemic is now in circulation by different ministries for analysis, before publication in the Official Journal. It will be released in the next few days, if nothing changes, a step taken for granted at the seat of government and among governors.

Sources consulted by Bugle who are working on this new advanced scenario what will be the restrictions at the moment confirmed among several others that include “hard” to “soft” variables. The mind behind these ads is that none of these restrictions will affect the economy.

The government has agreed with the governors that flights will be limited as much as possible Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and other countries around the world that are suffering from new waves of Covid-19, such as France or Italy.

The Director of the World Health Organization, Adhanom Gebreyesus, asserted on March 12 that “unless serious action is taken, the upward trend now flooding the health system” in Brazil will eventually “exceed” its capacity and cause more deaths. . neighboring countries “.

The president agreed with the governors, with whom he held a meeting via Zoom last Friday, and which will be repeated tomorrow, that border closures will be extreme which already exists for the overland passage of Argentinian and foreign citizens.

Another of the measures to be implemented will be the inclusion as “essential staff” of customs and immigration officers working at national borders. This is why a vaccination will also be programmed which will have these State agents in priority. The order of the state is that the controls on trucks transporting materials for export or import must be absolutely stringent.

Casa Rosada officials most involved in new anti-Covid-19 plan say at least entry has been detected seven thousand Argentines arrived in the last days from Brazil.

The Nation’s Health Ministry is concerned about the arrival, at least four weeks ago, of the so-called strain of coronavirus from Manaus, the Brazilian city from which this new mutation of the most contagious virus has spread.

The new restrictions will include the requirement for Argentines who have traveled abroad and returning to the country to pay for a PCR test to find out if they are returning from their destinations infected with the coronavirus. In addition, we will seek a means by which they must isolate themselves by obligation of the State.

For now, Casa Rosada excludes restricting movement between provinces or between towns within the same national district. For now means: for now. Any measure could be discarded or implemented if infections in Argentina began to increase exponentially.

President Alberto Fernández has agreed that these measures, and others, will be taken in a virtual meeting with the Peronist governors and the opposition in which dialectical clashes and anger were not lacking expressed on both sides.

The president also assured the governors that ANMAT is preparing to allow the over 60s to apply the Chinese vaccine of Sinopharm. The government bought three million doses from this eastern laboratory. It has not yet been confirmed when they will arrive in the country, but the government guarantees it will happen within the next two weeks.

The demand for more vaccines was unanimous among all governors in the President.

Most governors have assured that, at most, in the next three days, they will run out of vaccines to apply in their districts.

This is why the 330,000 doses of Sputnik V that landed in Ezeiza on a plane that arrived from Moscow last Friday would have already started to be distributed yesterday.

At 2 a.m. today, another Aerolineas Argentinas plane was due to return to Russia to bring, they are waiting at Casa Rosada, half a million additional vaccines. They are few.

He was the president of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales placeholder image, who called for customs and immigration staff to be included among the “essentials” so that they can be vaccinated.

The governor of Misiones, Oscar Herrera AhuadHe said his biggest fear is that Covid-19 patients from Brazil will cross the border to be treated in Argentinian hospitals.

The only one who expressed with some firmness that he was keeping the borders open with Chile was Suárez de Mendoza. The president did not like this position.

However, nothing could compare to the shock of the fighting between the governor of Formosa, Gildo Insfrán, and the president.

This province became the state lock emblem more discretionary and irregular. Insfrán was denounced for human rights violations because of his police checks to isolate the sick and healthy, even calling for repression and imprisonment against those who demanded greater freedoms, among other violations of democratic guarantees that obtained judicial decisions against federal judges and the Supreme Court, which Insfrán ignored.

When Fernández asked the governors to control the borders with neighboring countries, Insfrán said, spicy and courageous: “We have problems with the dry border with Paraguay. We are doing everything to control it. But the national media come to attack us. And you, Alberto, did not defend us “, She complained.

The president was annoyed: “Gildo, you have to watch the interviews I gave where I talked about Formosa.” In these reports, Fernández partially defended Insfrán’s leadership, but he also criticized, albeit with nuances, the traffic bans that affected the residents of Formosa and those who want to enter and leave this neighborhood.

“Juntos por el Cambio deputies who came to Formosa enjoy movement immunity because they are deputies, but not health immunity,” Insfrán added, referring to opposition lawmakers who went to his province to make visible the restrictions imposed by him. Insfrán insisted angrily: “Alberto, we are Peronists, Peronists wash dirty clothes at home. We will talk about it personally.” That same afternoon, Insfrán visited Casa Rosada in person. He had a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo De Pedro. Fernández was not there. He works in Olivos.

Not only has the pandemic not disappeared, nor has it subsided, but the Government expects it to progress, perhaps even more severely than it has already.

Politics, from the ruling party and the opposition, are not entirely in agreement on how to fight the virus that is spreading through the air. So simple and so complex.