Argentina’s Health Minister Carla Vizzotti announced that the country has officially entered the fourth wave of the coronavirus, but assured that there would be no new restrictions. A month before the onset of winter, vaccination stagnates and the population begins to lose acquired immunity.
The announcement of a new wave of the pandemic in Argentina follows the latest report on the health situation in the country, published this Sunday (15). The panorama, described by the Ministry of Health, pointed out that infections have doubled in just one week, tripled in two weeks and quadrupled in a month.
There have been 33,989 cases in the past seven days, up 92.6% from the 17,646 a week earlier. It was 182% more than two weeks ago. In the past four weeks, infections have increased by 305.2% from 8,387 to the current 33,989.
“Today in Argentina we are launching the fourth wave of Covid19, which is reaching us in a completely different situation than the previous ones,” said Health Minister Carla Vizzotti at the opening of the Federal Health Council, which brought together the health ministers of Argentina’s 24 provinces, in the Patagonian city of Villa La Angostura.
The minister underlined an “image in terms of vaccination that makes it possible to go through a new phase of the pandemic”.
“There is no possibility for new restrictions,” guaranteed Vizzotti, ruling out the possibility of new restrictions as practiced in 2020, when Argentina had the longest and strictest quarantine in the world for 233 days.
“Cases will increase. That is why we must promote vaccination so that it does not lead to hospitalization or death,” Minister Vizzotti said.
loss of acquired immunity
Due to the fall in cases over the summer, Argentina stopped releasing daily reports and adopted the weekly modality on April 17. Since then, however, the contagion curve has risen with the drop in temperature just over a month before winter.
The drop in temperature happened in tandem with three factors that experts say are the main causes of the new wave: the highly contagious Omicron variant, the relaxation of precautionary measures and the decline in acquired immunity, whether from contagions or vaccines.
“During the summer, the Omicron variant infected a large part of the population and brought temporary immunity. At the same time, vaccination was promoted and immunity was strengthened through vaccination. Now, months later, these two protective measures are beginning to lose their effectiveness after the third dose,” explains Roberto Debbag, President of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, to RFI.
Although the vaccination campaign reached 88% of the population with one dose and 80% with the full regimen, it has stagnated for months, especially for the booster vaccination at 47.6%.
“The main reason for the increase in cases is the slow pace of vaccination with the booster. We know that just two doses are not enough for the Omicron variant,” observes Eduardo López, infectious disease specialist at the Buenos Aires Children’s Hospital and director of pediatric infectious diseases at the Buenos Aires School of Medicine
New wave of mild cases
Despite the increase in infections, the occupancy rate of intensive care unit beds remains stable at 41.2% and the number of deaths even fell from 76 to 47 in the last week, down 40%.
“This indicates that we are starting a new wave, but in a new wave of mild cases,” acknowledged Federal District Minister of Health Fernán Quirós.
“It will not be like the previous waves where cases rose, then hospital admissions rose and patients died days later. This time, thanks to vaccination and acquired immunity, it will be a large majority of mild cases,” predicts Quirós.
The current Ministry of Health protocol stipulates that the tests are only carried out in the elderly and in risk groups. Experts therefore reckon that the increase of 92.6% in cases in the last week is high but underestimated.
In the Argentine capital, which has a different testing protocol open to all segments, the increase in cases over the past seven days was 128%.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Argentina has recorded 9.135 million infections among a total of 47 million people, of which 128,776 have died. In 87% of new cases, the ômicron variant is dominant over the subline BA.2.