English
After the country’s very first cases of COVID-19, the Argentinian federal government took strong measures to slow the spread of the new coronavirus and to boost the capacity of healthcare institutions. This preventative strategy succeeded, at first, in limiting the epidemic to the Buenos Aires metropolitan area and made it possible to focus testing on working-class neighborhoods. Later, the Argentine Republic’s federal constitution and its fragmented healthcare system limited the general cohesiveness of public policy and enabled the COVID-19 epidemic to accelerate in all of the country’s provinces.
Keywords
- Argentina
- COVID-19
- state
- healthcare system
- hospital
- health inequalities
- health professionals
- shortages of medical equipment
- access to health care
- lockdown
- health emergency