Ecuador’s president announces he will declare end to Covid-19 pandemic

Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced Monday that he would declare the Covid-19 pandemic in the South American country over.

“The pandemic has ended in Ecuador, thanks to a vaccination that we carried out a year ago, so we can say that the pandemic is now behind us,” Lasso said in a television interview.

He added that the end of the pandemic would be officially announced by the National Emergency Operations Committee (COE) with the participation of the Ministry of Public Health.

The National EOC, which includes agencies from various ministries, is responsible for managing the health crisis caused by the pandemic, which began in the country on Feb. 29, 2020, after discovering the first infection.

In the country, which launched its National Vaccination Plan in January 2021, 38.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered to the population, with CoronaVac, made by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac, being the most widely used.

The vaccination, which Lasso stepped up after taking office in May 2021, has been vital in the fight against the pandemic in the Andean nation of 18 million people.

Vaccination is mandatory for the target three years and older population, which includes more than 16 million people.

So far, 84.39 percent of the population, or more than 14.1 million people, have completed the two-dose schedule. In comparison, 52.79 percent (7.2 million people) have received the first booster vaccination and just over two million have received the second, according to the Ministry of Health’s Vaccinometer platform.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the country has so far recorded 1,005,662 infections and 25,566 confirmed deaths due to the virus, according to the latest official report.

In the last 24 hours, 99 new cases and zero deaths have been reported, while bed occupancy in public hospitals remains low.

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