Argentina began reopening its economic activity on Monday relaxing corona virus containment measures despite continued high infection rates.
The reopening of the Greater Buenos Aires area where 90% of Argentina’s corona virus cases have been concentrated comes despite the country reporting more than 3,000 new infections per day.
This new phase will continue on until August 2 with new permissions being granted every few days.
The new measures will allow citizens to exercise outside and to visit places of worship.
Other activities to restart are non-essential businesses such as hairdressers, lawyers, psychologists, and other industries including manufacturing and food processing.
Containment measures were relaxed once before but were then re-imposed on July 1 to contain a surge in cases in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (AMBA); home to 14 million of Argentina’s 44 million population.
The country registered 113 deaths from Covid-19 on Monday; the highest number of deaths in a single day in Argentina since the start of the corona virus pandemic.
It marked the first time Argentina had registered more than 100 fatalities in a 24-hour period, though figures on the first day after a weekend have often been higher during the crisis with some attributing higher tallies on a Monday to a delay in the collation of numbers.
The total death toll in Argentina from Covid-19 now stands at 2,373.
Officials said that 3,937 new cases have been recorded pushing the total number of infections there to date to 130,774.
Source: Reuters London