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Based on a synthetic overview that embraces the evolution of the 'health' concept, and its related institutions, from the role of health as the main indicator of fundamental human rights—as envisaged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—to its qualification as the systems of disease control dependent on criteria of economic sustainability, the paper focuses on the implications and the impact of such evolution in two model scenarios which are centred on the COVID-19 pandemia. The article analyses COVID-19 both in the characteristics of its global dynamics and in its concrete management, as performed in a model medium income country, Argentina. In a world which has progressively assigned market values and goods an absolute strategic and political priority over the health needs and the rights to health of individual and peoples, the recognition of health as human right is confined to aspirational recommendations and rather hollowed out declarations of good will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]