Argentine Health Minister Carla Vizzotti announced that the country had officially entered the fourth wave of coronavirus, but assured that there would be no new quarantines. A month before the arrival of winter, vaccination is stationary and the population begins to lose acquired immunity.

The announcement of a new wave of pandemics in Argentina is a culmination of the latest report released this Sunday (15) on the state of health in the country. The panorama announced by the Ministry of Health drew attention to the fact that infections doubled in just one week, tripled in two weeks, and quadrupled in one month.

There were 33,989 cases in the previous seven days, 92.6% more than 17,646 the week before. It was 182% more than two weeks ago. In the last four weeks, infections have increased 305.2% from 8,387 to the current 33,989.

In her speech at the opening of the Federal Health Council, which brought the ministers together, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti said, “Today we are launching the fourth wave of Covid-19 that has reached us in Argentina in a completely different situation than the previous ones.” Ministry of Health of 24 Argentine provinces in Villa La Angostura, Patagonia.

He underlined “a picture of the vaccine that allows us to go through a new phase of the epidemic”.

“There is no possibility of new incarceration,” Vizzotti assured, ruling out the possibility of new restrictions, such as those imposed in 2020, when Argentina had the longest and strictest quarantine in the world at 233 days.

Minister Vizzotti said, “The cases will increase. Therefore, we need to proceed with vaccines so that they do not turn into hospitalizations or deaths.”

Acquired loss of immunity

Due to the decline in cases during the summer, Argentina stopped publishing the daily reports and adopted the weekly modality from 17 April. However, since then, the contagion curve has increased as the temperature drops, a little over a month before winter.

The drop in temperature paralleled three factors that experts pointed to as the main factors explaining the new wave: the highly contagious omicron variant, the relaxation in preventive care, and the reduction of either infectious or vaccine-acquired immunity.

“Over the summer, the omicron variant infected a large part of the population, conferring temporary immunity. At the same time, vaccination progressed, boosting immunity through immunization. Now, months later, these two protections are starting to lose their effect,” said RFI Roberto Debbag, president of the Latin American Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. explains to .

Although the vaccination campaign reached 88% of the population with a single dose and 80% with the full regimen, it had been stagnant for months, especially at the booster dose at 47.6%.

“The main reason for the increase in cases is the slow progression of vaccination with vaccine dose. We know that just two doses are not enough for the Omicron variant,” says Eduardo López, an infectious disease specialist at 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 rise in infections, bed occupancy in intensive care units remains steady at 41.2%, and even last week the death toll fell 40% from 76 to 47.

“This shows that we are starting a new wave, but a new wave of mild cases,” said Fernán Quirós, Federal Territory Health Minister.

“It won’t be like previous waves where cases increased, then hospitalizations increased and patients died. This time, thanks to vaccination and acquired immunity, there will be the vast majority of mild cases,” Quirós says.

The current protocol of the Ministry of Health reveals that the tests are carried out only in the elderly and risk groups. For this reason, experts calculate that the 92.6% increase in cases in the last week is underestimated despite the high increase.

In the Argentine capital, where another public test protocol is administered, the case increase in the last seven days has been 128%.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, Argentina has seen 9,135 million infections, of which 128,776 have died out of a total population of 47 million. In 87% of new cases, the ômicron variant predominates via the BA.2 subline.