At 00:00 of this saturday the Administrative Decision 643/2021 that carries out the firm of the Chief of Staff, Santiago Cafiero came into full force and has extended travel restrictions to non-resident foreigners to the Argentine Republic and the suspension regular flights from the United Kingdom, Turkey, Brazil, Chile, India and African countries, as well as other complementary measures until July 9.
The main measures that the executive order contains are:
- The reduction of the number of daily passengers that can reach the country in regular flights, from the current 2,000 to just 600.
- A mandate for the provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires to determine the places where passengers that enter the national territory between the 1st of July and the 31st of August are to observe isolation for ten days since the date of the test taken for boarding inbound flight, with all costs of accommodation and tests borne by the traveler.
The first measure is the most critical for both airlines and the entire airport ecosystem, which will see its capacity to generate tickets reduced, adding all the extra load that the reprogramming of flights entails. For the passengers, it will mean fewer options -and those remaining, with a significant price increase- to fly. For those who are abroad, the options are scarce: to extend their journey with the subsequently added costs or to cut their travel short and get back to the country, a task that will become much more complex with the new, reduced availability.
The second may serve to discourage travel, but it will be interesting to see how the different jurisdictions manage to implement, in five days, both the tracking of those who return from abroad through Buenos Aires and how they are transferred to the jurisdiction they belong to, as well as the accommodation.
It should be emphasized that perhaps it would be convenient to decentralize the arrival of international flights to other airports in the provinces, to avoid internal movements for travelers to observe a quarantine in their legal address, which can be located thousands of kilometers away from Ezeiza airport.
The Administrative Decision also emphasizes that «when the existence of an infringement of compliance with the measures established therein or other rules available for the protection of public health within the framework of the health emergency is verified,
the offending conduct will be immediately terminated and the pertinent criminal charges will be made, pursuant to articles 205, 239 and in accordance with the Penal Code, which sanction, respectively, the imprisonment of SIX (6) months to TWO (2) years, the violation of the measures adopted to prevent the introduction or spread of an epidemic and the imprisonment of FIFTEEN (15) days to ONE (1) year, the resistance or disobedience to the orders issued by public officials».
Last weekend, Migrations revealed the results of an operation that allowed them to detect that only 38% of the passengers who arrived from abroad in the country were carrying out self-isolation in their declared households. That can explain the need to change the way the quarantine on arrival is observed, but the enforcement seems to be extremely hard to achieve.
The main reason for these stricter restrictions to be implemented is the fear of new covid variants, with an emphasis on Delta, which the national health department has stated is not currently in a community spread phase. While the vaccination campaign advances, the measures aim to avoid the introduction of a much more contagious and potentially lethal variant that would stress a health system that was just on the verge of collapse and is barely holding up.
In the southern hemisphere, the threat of covid is far from over. While northern countries are starting to ease restrictions and regaining a sense of normality, South America prepares for a harsh quarter after which it should start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But for now, both literally and metaphorically, winter is coming.
