Buenos Aires, May 2 (IANS): Argentine Health Minister Carla Vizzotti on Saturday called on citizens to "minimise activities" and strengthen personal care to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

Vizzotti said that for the health system to continue responding to the health crisis effectively, "it is very important that we try to minimise activities throughout the country, and that each activity we do, we do with extreme care, so that we can continue to see this decrease in the number of cases."

At the ministry headquarters, Vizzotti officially welcomed 250 new ventilators out of a total of 546 the government has acquired to respond to the demand generated by the new wave of cases, the Ministry of Health reported.

The ministry stated that since the beginning of the pandemic, it has distributed 3,682 ventilators throughout the country, the Xinhua news agency reported.

However, despite the expansion in equipment and the increase in intensive care unit beds, the ministry stated it was necessary to continue to comply with health measures to slow the spread of the virus.

Argentina reported 2,977,363 total cases and 63,865 deaths from Covid-19 as of Friday, and it has so far administered 7,971,470 doses of vaccines since its mass vaccination campaign began on December 29, 2020.