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| A nurse checks a patient suffering from COVID-19 in an intensive care unit of a hospital, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, on Oct 16, 2020. (Photo by=REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian) |
[Asia News Communication = Reporter Reakkana] Argentina passed 1 million virus cases on Monday, it is now smaller cities like Ushuaia that are seeing some of the most notable upticks.
Health workers in Ushuaia were able to contain a small outbreak among foreigners hoping to catch boats to the Antarctic at the start of the crisis. Now, doctors had to quadruple the number of beds for COVID-19 patients over the last month. Around 60 percent of those tested are coming back positive for the virus. In Ushuaia, officials believe truckers carrying in produce from the Buenos Aires region may be responsible for the rise in cases since mid-September. The city famous as a departure point for cruises to the Antarctic had been a model for the nation. Closed off air travel and a halt on tourism left it virus free for months.
“The second wave is arriving without ever having finished the first,” said Dr. Luis Jorge Hernández, a public health professor at the University of the Andes in Colombia. Argentina’s cases increase despite having one of the world’s longest lockdowns. Dr. Adolfo Rubinstein, a former Argentine health minister, said the nation depended too heavily on lockdowns as its primary means of controlling the virus, failing to purchase enough tests in the initial months of the pandemic.
