Between 1,800 and 2,000 trucks have been forming long lines for two days on the Argentine side of the Paso Cristo Redentor, the most important border crossing with Chile, due to Covid tests required by the Chilean authorities, transport workers reported this Tuesday (18). Argentines.
“At some point, the supply network will be cut. It’s not a funnel, it’s a plug. In practice, the passage is closed,” Daniel Gallart, from the Mendoza Truck Owners Association, told AFP.
The situation at the border crossing in front of the province of Mendoza, in the Cordillera de los Andes, began 48 hours ago, when Chile tightened its sanitary controls on Argentine drivers, the Argentine Federation of Business Entities of Autotransporte de Cargas said in a statement.
“We’re talking about 2,000 or 1,800 trucks. They come from all over Mercosur. According to traffic statistics, 50% are Argentines, 30% Brazilians and the rest from other countries,” said Gallart.
The transport federation has demanded that Chile enable more service stations now that stricter controls have returned. “We do not question the sovereign measure of a country, but the consequences that this decision causes. We are not against testing drivers, but this should be agile,” he added in a statement.
The delays represent losses of millions of dollars for the country’s international trade through Pacific ports, when global logistics are already affected by the pandemic, according to the truck drivers, who asked for the formal intervention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Around 900 Argentine trucks cross the Cristo Redentor pass daily from the Argentine province of Mendoza, 1,050 km west of Buenos Aires. In 2018, before the pandemic, more than 580,000 trucks crossed the Argentine-Chilean border there, according to a recent binational study.
The two countries are advancing in their vaccination plans against Covid-19 and Chile is already willing to start the application of a fourth dose. 86.1% of the 45 million Argentines have already received one dose, 75.2% two and 21.4% have already taken the booster.
But Argentina is currently experiencing a wave of cases of the omicron variant, with 120,000 infections and almost 200 deaths a day.
Chilean sources assure that the delay could be aggravated by the transit of Argentine tourists heading to Chile, also obliged to comply with sanitary requirements.
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