SHOTLIST:

1. Various of the streets of Buenos Aires
2. Various of shops on the streets of Buenos Aires
3. Various of commercial street in Santa Fe

STORYLINE:

Argentina began reopening of economic activity on Monday, relaxing coronavirus containment measures despite continued high infection rates.

The reopening of the Greater Buenos Aires area, where 90 percent of Argentina's coronavirus cases have been concentrated, comes despite the country reporting more than 3,000 new infections a day. This new phase will continue until August 2, with new permissions granted every few days.

The new measures allow citizens to exercise outside and to visit places of worship. Other activities to restart are non-essential businesses such as hairdressers; lawyers and psychologists; and industry including manufacturing and food processing.

Containment measures were relaxed once before but then reimposed on July 1 to contain a surge in cases in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (AMBA), home to 14 million of Argentina's 44 million population.

The country registered 113 deaths from Covid-19 on Monday, the highest number of deaths in a single day since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

It marked the first time Argentina had registered more 100 fatalities in a 24-hour period, though figures on the first day after a weekend have often been higher during the crisis, with some attributing higher tallies on a Monday to a delay in the collation of numbers.

The total death toll in Argentina from Covid-19 now stands at 2,373.

Officials said that 3,937 new cases had been recorded, pushing the total number of infections to date to 130,774.

The Health Ministry's daily update also said 55.6 percent of all intensive care beds for adults in the country are now occupied, with the figure rising to 65 percent in the AMBA region.


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