MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Journalist Mauro Viale dies of covid-19 aged 73

“They warned me that I could get a fever,” said Viale after being vaccinated last week.

Famous Argentine TV-radio host and former sportscaster Mauro Viale has died in Buenos Aires at the age of 73 due to covid-19 complications, it was reported. He had received the first dose of the vaccine against the Covid-19 coronavirus last week.

Viale had experienced mild symptoms when he was hospitalized Saturday and tested for Sars-CoV-2 which came out positive. His condition turned for the worse on Sunday when it became bilateral pneumonia.

“Today I went to get vaccinated and the first thing they did was take my temperature. They warned me that I could get a fever. They are aiming to call me to ask if I had a fever because it is very dangerous for the vaccine to act with this side effect. I don't have a fever,” Viale had said joyfully after getting the jab.

Argentine President Alberto Fernández expressed his condolences on Twitter: “He was a man who practised journalism with his own imprint. Personally, I lose someone for whom I felt deep affection and for whom I always recognized the gift of respecting plurality.”

“My condolences to his family and to those who, like me, have loved him,” Fernández added.

Viale had started off as a sportscaster, becoming a top-class football narrator. When he chose to take his professional career elsewhere, his former classmate at the sports journalism school Marcelo Araujo took over. Araujo himself has now spent the last 30 days hospitalized, also battling covid-19, it was reported.

It would seem that all of a sudden covid-19 has hit Argentina's rich and famous: Opposition Senator Eduardo Costa (UCR-Santa Cruz) was flown in from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires' Los Arcos clinic as a result of the worsening pneumonia of a coronavirus picture. “He is in a delicate state,” according to his Juntos por el Cambio coalition sources.

It is the same clinic where Viale has died.