
The Argentine auto industry bottomed out in April, the first full month of the quarantine in force in the country since March 20. With all its factories closed since that day, not a single vehicle left the assembly lines, a catastrophe without historical precedent. But little by little, last week they came back to life under strict sanitary protocols, with only one shift per day and production at one-third of the installed capacity.

Argentina extended until June 7 a mandatory lockdown in metropolitan Buenos Aires on Saturday and tightened some movement restrictions, after a steady increase in the city's confirmed coronavirus cases in recent days.

After 50 days in mandatory lockdown, Argentina's President Alberto Fernández announced on Friday that the quarantine will be extended until May 24th.

Several hundred activists blocked this week one of Buenos Aires' main avenues for hours to demand food for soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands in poor neighborhoods during the mandatory lockdown aimed at preventing the spread of the new coronavirus.

A Buenos Aires crude oil refinery operated by Argentine state-controlled energy firm YPF is running with a minimal level of workers due to a drop in consumption and a lack of storage space amid a crash in global oil prices during the coronavirus pandemic, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires authorities on Monday announced it was stepping up measures to curb the COVID-19 outbreak by making face masks mandatory on public transit.

Argentina will extend until April 27 the lockdown it imposed last month to control the spread of the coronavirus, President Alberto Fernandez said in a televised address on Friday, adding that the measure would be applied only in major cities.

Argentina does not plan to resume debt payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for five years, buying time to pull the economy out of a worsening recession after the coronavirus outbreak led the government to impose a stay-at-home order until the end of March which also put the brakes- on activity

The Argentine Tierra del Fuego province government rushed some 400 passengers from a cruise vessel, by air, to Buenos Aires before the implementation of a coronavirus fourteen-day quarantine which becomes effective this Monday. The Norwegian flagged vessel Midnatsol arrived on Saturday to Ushuaia from Antarctica.

Argentina's health ministry announced on Monday five new confirmed cases of coronavirus, taking the total number to 17. All of them were described as imported cases since they involved people who arrived from overseas. They include a patient in Buenos Aires City, two from Chaco province, one from San Luis and the fifth in Patagonia Rio Negro province.