Measures against second wave of COVID-19 will take effect on Saturday to discourage overseas travel over Easter

The national government will issue a Administrative decision (DEA) this Friday with a series of measures to fight against the arrival of the second wave of COVID-19. They will come into effect next Saturday with the aim of discouraging foreign flights during Holy Week.

The Government’s goal is for there to be as little travel as possible during the religious celebration, when many citizens usually move within the country or abroad, which in this case is of most concern. . This is why the decision that the measures take effect this weekend.

The Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, confirmed this afternoon in a television interview that the administrative decision will be known this Friday, even if the government has not ruled out that it will be published before the end of Thursday.

Some minimal details remain to be defined but four central measures have already been stipulated which mark the start of the fight against the second wave of coronavirus. In recent days there have been several meetings at Balcarce 50 in which the Chief of Staff participated, Santiago Cafiero; the head of the Legal and Technical Secretariat, Vilma ibarra, holder of the Health portfolio, Carla Vizzotti; the Minister of Transport, Mario meoni; and the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior.

Flights from Brazil will be kept to a minimum, where the Manau strain circulates at full speed, one of the most contagious and which causes the most concern at the Ministry of Health. In addition, the flights of the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark, country where one of the new strains has been detected.

Another measure, so advanced Infobae On Tuesday, it will be the obligation for all people who enter the country to undergo a test to determine whether or not they are infected with coronavirus. It will be a RAP that will have to be paid by each of those returning to Argentina.

The third measure goes hand in hand with the result of this analysis. If positive, people must comply with a mandatory 10-day quarantine, which will be carried out at the legally declared address. The control of compliance will be in the hands of provincial and municipal authorities, who will have to follow up in detail in each case.

For now, enforcing hotel quarantine, which is paid for by each of the people who must comply with isolation, is not a viable possibility.. It was an option that passed through official offices but was not approved by all the ministries that coordinate the new measures. In any case, the possibility remains latent. This is not completely out of the question.

The government wants to prevent people returning to the country from observing isolation days and end up generating infections with the new strain. So far there is no circulation of the Manaus strain or the South African strain, and at Casa Rosada, they understand that restricting flights, testing and actual compliance with quarantine will be decisive. to prevent the spread of the virus.

A fourth measure will aim to strengthen border control. For this they will be used federal forces who support those who are already at each border control. It is not yet defined, but the Armed Forces could provide logistical support, because, under the law on internal security, they cannot send military personnel to control crossings between countries.

Until Thursday, it was not possible to close the borders between the provinces and restrict traffic to certain time slots of the day. In the latter case, the measure was present in some meetings that took place in Casa Rosada and in which it was conducted with the governors, but, for the moment, its implementation is not progressing.

In the government, they warn that the health situation is very dynamic and that the measures to be taken from this weekend they can be updated in the coming days if there is a sustained increase in infections across the country.

In the Casa Rosada it is clear that the style of the measures that can be taken is like those that will start to be applied from the weekend. It is impossible to think of a generalized quarantine similar to the ones Argentines complied with in the first half of 2020. Two reasons prevent it: the failure of the people and the government’s decision not to slow down the economy any longer.

If the health scenario worsens somewhere in the country, the official intention is for each province or municipality to carry out a targeted quarantine. Isolated cases regulated by local authorities. In government, they know that there is no room to apply restrictive measures that cut off the massive movement of people. Even though there is an increase in coronavirus cases in the coming days.

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