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News > Argentina

Argentina, Between COVID-19, Blackouts, and a Heat Wave

  • Cities and towns in Argentina and neighboring countries in South America have been setting record high temperatures as the region swelters during a historic heat wave.

    Cities and towns in Argentina and neighboring countries in South America have been setting record high temperatures as the region swelters during a historic heat wave. | Photo: Twitter @ReutersScience

Published 15 January 2022
Opinion

Argentina is facing one of the most shocking heatwaves in recent decades and is today one of the hottest places in the world. Combined with the high temperatures, the population suffers from massive blackouts due to the high energy demand, and the figures for COVID-19 are above 100,000 a day.

Argentina is going through this first fortnight of 2022 with an overwhelming heat like never before, blackouts in several places, and the advance of the third wave of COVID-19, which registers more than 100,000 cases daily.

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This 2022 seems to have raged with this side of South America, which this Saturday woke up with 38 degrees temperature and a wind chill of 43. For many, it is even worse because there are several towns without electricity for hours, especially in the capital, due to the high power demand.

While some pray for rain to fall from the sky, the situation is suffocating and worrying. As if from a movie, one could even describe the image of yesterday afternoon in the Argentine capital, where the sky turned orange due to the heat, coupled with a dense curtain of smoke from the forest fires that impact nine provinces.

Not even cold Patagonia is spared from the heat; although their thermometers don't reach 30 degrees, record temperatures have also been registered in some areas.

Argentina is facing one of the most shocking heatwaves in recent decades and is today one of the hottest places in the world. In the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, where many tourists flock to the beaches this summer, yesterday the thermometers marked above 41 degrees, the highest figure in 65 years.

For a week, the country has been shaken by high temperatures; Santiago del Estero with 43.4 degrees, the Buenos Aires town of Punta Indio with 43.1, San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca with 42.6, and Buenos Aires itself with 41.5 degrees.

Temperatures are so overwhelming that even a reporter covering live for channel nine the long lines to swab himself, due to the increase in cases of Covid-19, fell on the ground and had to be treated by medical personnel.

And that's another dilemma. This first fortnight has already registered more cases of those infected by the pandemic than in the last two months, with peaks above 138 thousand daily.

Hectares devastated by fires like the one that started the day before in the Florentino Ameghino Municipal Nursery Forest in the Buenos Aires town of Miramar, flames also in the Paraná Delta, more than 44 thousand users without power at this time in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The scene looks Dantesque.

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