The postcard is strange. Pinamar reaches 100% occupancy, there is not a single place to park near the sea, tourists crowd the sand and street vendors of churros and corn cannot cope with so much demand. But, despite the fact that years ago the coastal city did not have such a successful season, more and more places are beginning to be closed. It is not because businesses are not going from strength to strength, quite the opposite: there are so many people vacationing that Covid cases have increased by twenty since the year began, an advance of the virus that is also affecting local businesses. Spas, restaurants, and shops are lowering their blinds due to the infections of their employees. It’s a nightmare in the middle of summer.
Pandemic. Pinamar started 2022 with 170 active cases. On the closing day of this edition, that number had grown to 2,054, and that is just the cases that are counted. It is logical that this increase also affects local activities, something that was seen, for example, last Sunday 9: that day, with the city overrun with tourists, five central spas could not open because their staff were infected. “Between the first case appears and the time we reopen, we lose five or six days of work, in the middle of the season, which is a lot, because you pay the salaries and costs the same”says Julián, the owner of the “El Dorado” inn. It is a reality that also reached at least two restaurants in Pinamar and another in Cariló, in addition to “La Jirafa”, the most famous croissant place in this city. “Closed for reasons of force majeure,” read a sign posted on his door.
It is that, in everything that has to do with the gastronomic field, the Covid is almost a bomb: if a waiter or someone in the kitchen gets sick, it is more than likely that everyone will be infected, in shifts that usually last eight hours. “We are in serious problems, we do not have personnel to replace the one we have to isolate, and there are positions that are impossible to replace, it is very difficult, for example, to find a substitute cook in the middle of the season”, says Pedro Marinovic, president of the Hotel and Gastronomic Chamber of Pinamar, who wonders if it would be necessary to put some kind of capacity to avoid the outbreak of contagion. It is a subject that also follows the municipality of the city. “It is a problem but it should ease in the next few days, with the change in the isolation of vaccinated close contacts that would not leave so many people out of their jobs,” says Martín Yeza, the mayor. Nobody wants the pandemic to ruin the season.
