COVID-19: Riskiest Places for Vacation in Argentina

After an unexpected and problematic 2020 due to the emergence of the pandemic by COVID-19 which forced all countries to take measures of prolonged isolation, millions of Argentines found in the 2021 summer holidays the opportunity to recharge their energy, take a few days off, clear their minds and enjoy life outdoors a bit, so many months restricted by the extensive quarantine of several months that governed the country.

So, Millions of Argentines found themselves faced with the dilemma of taking a few days off from the danger or concern of being more exposed to a coronavirus contagion by going to places where SARS-CoV-2 is expected to circulate more, simply because the number of people in a place, city or region increases and as a direct consequence, there are more infections.

The Ministry of Sports and Tourism of the Nation revealed that 16 million people vacationed in January and released in recent days a report with the places most visited by Argentines, obviously places where the virus circulated the most.

The southern lakes summoned thousands of tourists this summer who were not afraid of COVID-19 (@turismonacionar)

“We are having a great summer. In a difficult context, from the national government we made a brave and daring political decision, which was to have a season, and we believe that the results were extremely positive, to start the reactivation of our regional economies,” said the head of the aforementioned portfolio, Matias Lammens. According to the data collected, the Government predicts a season that will be between 65% and 70% compared to 2020.

Before launching the summer season, the Government analyzed the factor “reason for the cases” and determined which were the tourist sites with the most probable infections. When the ratio –the quotient (division) between the number of confirmed cases accumulated in the last 14 days and the number of infections accumulated in the previous 14 days– exceeds 1.20. On the other hand, if the incidence –indicator resulting from the number of confirmed cases accumulated in the last 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants– is greater than 150.

The Minister of Tourism and Sports of Argentina, Matias Lammens, considered the season positive despite the virus.

Thus, it took the main tourist destinations of the Argentina and established the categories of “low risk”, “medium risk”, “high risk” and “very high risk”, with the following result:

Low risk: Purmamarca (Jujuy), San Rafael and Tunuyan (Mendoza).

Medium risk: Merlo (San Luis), Cafayate (Salta) and Mina Clavero (Cordoba).

High risk: Pinamar (Buenos Aires Atlantic Coast), Gualeguaychu (Entre Ríos) and Calamuchita (Cordoba).

Very high risk: San Bernardo (Atlantic Coast), Las Grutas (Rio Negro) and Villa La Angostura (Neuquen).

In Pinamar there were not many chinstraps when going to the beach (Diego Medina)

According to the report of the Ministry of Tourism, the first three places on the podium of the ranking of the 20 most visited places correspond to the Partido de la Costa (70 percent occupancy), Mar del Plata (52 percent with peaks of 85 on weekends) and Villa Gesell (70 percent), respectively.

In the fourth place a prominent Patagonian city appears as it is San Carlos de Bariloche. And completes the Top 5 the Cordoba Villa Carlos Paz. It should be remembered that the province of Cordoba was opened to national tourism only in January of this year, since during the month of December 2020 it only worked with internal tourism. The list of cities with the highest influx of tourists in this first month of 2021 continues with Pinamar, Monte Hermoso, San Martin de los Andes, Miramar and the city of Cordoba. As of February 5, in Pinamar there were 2,334 cases of infected since the beginning of the pandemic.

In all the Buenos Aires spas the alarms were lit due to the influx of people in January, the massive attendance to the beaches during the day and the danger of clandestine parties at night.

Villa La Angostura is one of the most visited towns this summer (@turismonacionar)

The alert also went off in the Neuquen towns of San Martin de los Andes, Junin de los Andes and Villa La Angostura. And also in the Rio Negro Bariloche and El Bolson.

The province of Cordoba already has two consecutive days with higher than new cases of COVID-19, when 126 positives were registered the day before yesterday and 132 yesterday.

According to the report from the Tourism portfolio, the most visited Argentine province during January was Buenos Aires, with 44%, followed by Cordoba (15.4%), Entre Rios (7.1%), Neuquen (5.7%) ), Rio Negro (5.4%), Mendoza (3.3%), Salta (3.1%), San Luis (2.9%), Chubut (2.7%) and Santa Fe (2.1 %).