> HEALTH MINISTER CARLA VIZZOTTI INFECTED WITH COVID-19
New health minister enters quarantine after positive test; Cabinet Chief Santiago Cafiero also in isolation.
Just six days after swearing in, Argentina’s new Health Minister Carla Vizzotti tested positive for coronavirus yesterday, also imposing quarantine on Cabinet Chief Santiago Cafiero as a close contact.
Vizzotti, 48, said that she had undergone the swab test as a routine precaution for attending the opening of ordinary sessions of Congress next Monday, whereupon she received the surprising result of positive.
“I’ll thus be in isolation for the next few days, following the established protocol,” she said in a post on social networks.
The diagnosis could complicate things severely for the government, given the newly appointed minister’s role and how many other officials she has been in contact with of late.
Earlier yesterday Vizzotti accompanied Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof at an event in Morón also attended by the top provincial health brass, Minister Daniel Gollan and Deputy Minister Nicolás Kreplak.
On Thursday she had teamed up with Cafiero and Defence Minister Agustín Rossi, thus also removing the former from public life, while later that evening she was at Ezeiza international airport with Cafiero, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá, Aerolíneas Argentinas President Pablo Ceriani and China’s Ambassador to Argentina Zou Xiaol.
“The pandemic is not over, keep taking care,” assured Vizzotti via her Twitter account, where she shared a manual of precautions against Covid-19.
Her removal from the limelight comes with the “VIP vaccine” scandal which toppled her predecesor Ginés González García still raging.