the Government prepares a “harmonic flexibility”

50 days after the start of the mandatory social preventive isolation ordered as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic that affects the entire planet, the national government seeks ways to further relax the measure, allowing new sectors to resume their activities and thus reactivate the economy hit, but without neglecting the health issue.

For this reason, between Friday and Saturday, President Alberto Fernández will announce the “harmonic easing” of the quarantine, a new stage that will run from Monday, May 11 to May 25, inclusive, and that it has the “objective of transiting a gradual exit” from compulsory isolation, but with “specific conditions in each place” of the country and with “protocol by economic activity”.

Government sources confirmed that the new phase of the quarantine is going to extend until May 25 inclusive and remarked that although starting on May 11 a harmonious flexibilization will be sought, “it is always proof of trial and error.”

For this reason, the Government placed special emphasis on continuing to look at the protocols and to see how the issue of the use of public transport is resolved, one of the hottest points of the matter. Anyway, it is clear that although in this new phase some activities will be opened in the city and the Buenos Aires suburbs, surely they will be more in the interior of the country.

In this context, government spokesmen indicated that starting Monday they will open, with a special protocol, some plants to produce cigarettes, a product that currently suffers from a lack of stock.

The national government had set a goal of achieving a doubling rate of coronavirus infections every 25 days to enable the gradual reopening of economic activities, an objective that could be achieved on May 10.

“With this rate of contagion, on May 10 we should be doubling the cases of coronavirus every 25 days. It could start to open some sectors because it is the objective that was set,” they say from the Executive Branch.

Despite the optimism, the opening of activities will be drop by drop because, as they repeat in the Government, “the question is to count losses in the industry or count deaths.”

The sources consulted indicated that “the president is thinking about the whole world, but Capital and the Buenos Aires metropolitan area are going to have to wait a bit” to have a greater opening of activities.

Likewise, there are sectors that for a long time must forget to resume their normality. For example, theaters, cinemas, public shows, restaurants and bars.

What may happen is that starting next Monday, in some places, people can start dating the boys, an issue that became controversial on April 25 when the President announced the current phase of the quarantine and left it open that possibility, without having agreed with the governors.

Official compliance with what has been done so far

The Government agrees with the measures taken since March 20, when compulsory confinement began, since currently, “the community circulation of the virus exists but it is very low” and attributes it to the suspension of classes and quarantine early that “cut off circulation at the root”.

“Nine people out of 1,200 tests came up with antibodies. Of the nine, seven had traveled abroad,” government sources said to support this position.

Finally, sources consulted by the NA agency highlighted that “the level of social protection that Argentina has today is gigantic”, and considered that “the country’s curve is a wonder in the world”.

“If the quarantine had not been implemented, with the speed with which the virus was reproducing at that time, today we would have approximately 700,000 infected. With that number, there would be 140,000 internees, of whom 35,000 would need respirators and we have 8,000 respirators available in Argentina “, they concluded.

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