The Argentine government has ordered people to stay at home until mid-April, but thousands have literally nowhere to go -- for them "home" is the street.
The homeless are among the very few seen on the streets of the capital Buenos Aires since President Alberto Fernandez issued a mandatory confinement order on March 20, and since extending beyond it an initial two weeks.
They sleep in squares and in the doorways of bank buildings and now-shuttered stores in the city's swanky center. They say municipality shelters are overcrowded and some have decried police violence, saying they have at times been forcibly removed from spots they have lived on for years.
A year ago, Richard Marcelo set up an improvised shelter on the street near the landmark Obelisk monument on the city's broad July 9 avenue.
"We are trying to cope with it as best we can," said the Uruguayan, 46, surrounded by rows of cardboard and mattresses where he and his companions sleep.
But for the homeless, there are worse things than the pandemic.
"What we are afraid of is hunger, everything else including the coronavirus, no."
"I was desperate, I was hungry and I met this group," which has provided him with a lifeline: "Now with everything that's going on with the coronavirus, if you were to leave me alone in the corner, I would die."
But he conceded: "It is very difficult to achieve this goal."
In that case "we go to the garbage bins... Yesterday we ate a cold cut that was in bad condition. It was smelly, but we hadn't eaten for days. We washed it and ate it."