Sars-Cov-2 in Argentina: Lockdown, Mobility, and Contagion

Abstract

There is a debate in Argentina about the effectiveness of mandatory lockdown policies in containing Sars-Cov-2 disease. This policy has already six months long making it one of the longest in the World. The population effort to comply the lockdown has been decreasing over time given the economic and social costs that it entails. This contribution analyzes the relationship between mobility and contagion in Argentina at a provincial level. It also models issues of internal political discussion on regional contagion and the effect of protests and unexpected crowd events. I use pool, fixed, and random effects panel data modeling and results show that lockdown in Argentina has been effective in reducing mobility but not in a way that reduces the rate of contagion. Strict lockdown seems to be effective in short periods of time and but extend it without complementary mitigation measures it losses effectiveness. Contagion rate seems to be discretely displaced in time and resurges amidst slowly increasing in mobility.