The Argentine government is considering moving the quarantine back to the previous phase in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area amidst the surge of cases that on Wednesday reached a record of 316 in one day.

According to the government, ten people died in the last 24 hours in Argentina and the highest number of people infected in one day since the pandemic began was reached, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 329 and the number of people infected since the outbreak to 6,879.

The situation is so tense that Chief of Staff Santiago Cafiero led an emergency meeting of the Development, Health, and Security teams in the evening to discuss how to contain contagion in the city's underprivileged neighborhoods, which are now the main outbreak points.

Argentina begins to reopen the big cities

At the Casa Rosada, officials avoided talking about the "peak" of the pandemic and paid more attention to the sequence of days in which cases were doubling. On May 8, the number of cases broke through the 200 daily barriers for the first time since the first case was reported on March 3. In less than a week the barrier of 300 was surpassed, especially because of the number of cases detected in the City and more precisely in Buenos Aires's poorest neighborhoods.

If the number of cases continues to grow, the government assured LPO that there would be a return to phase two, i.e. that in the city and the suburbs half of the population would no longer be able to circulate as expected for the current phase, but only 25%.

While in the rest of the country phase 4 of the lockdown was implemented, under the name "Progressive Reopening", phase 3, called "Geographical Segmentation", is being maintained in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, with most of the shops being opened, as can be seen in the city as of this Tuesday.

The warning from the Casa Rosada seems to have been directed primarily to Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who was the most aggressive in the opening of his city

But if the rate of case doubling drops and is maintained for fewer days than the Government had been stipulating for relaxing the lockdown, the Government assured to LPO that it will return to phase two, in other words, that in the City and the Greater Buenos Aires it will no longer be possible for half of the population to circulate as expected for the current phase, but only 25%.

The warning from the Casa Rosada seems to have been directed primarily to Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who was the most aggressive in the opening of his city, to the point that it caused annoyance to Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof and the mayors of the Metropolitan Area.

With 75 percent of the businesses open, there was a strong increase in the number of people on the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

In Chile, President Sebastián Piñera had to tighten restrictions in the capital like never before after the number of infections shot up by 60 percent in a single day. This phenomenon is also occurring in China, where the first known cases of the virus emerged. In the city of Jilin, in northeast China, the government again imposed partial confinement after new cases of the coronavirus appeared, in fear of the second wave of contagion in the country. After enabling classes, it banned them again and also shut down gyms, cinemas, and shops.

The situation in the lower-income neighborhoods has led the government to speed up the " The neighborhood cares for the neighborhood" program through the Ministry of Social Development and the "Detect" plan to identify the people with the greatest health and social vulnerabilities, and to ensure the provision of personal hygiene supplies, as agreed at the meeting of Ministers Daniel Arroyo, Ginés González García and Sabina Frederic with Cafiero. 

Total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the beginning of the outbreak 

Total number of confirmed deaths since the beginning of the outbreak