QUITO, April 29 (NNN-XINHUA) — The use of masks will no longer be mandatory in both open and closed spaces in Ecuador starting from Thursday, announced Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso together with the National Emergency Operations Committee.
Removing his face mask as a symbolic act, Lasso said that this day had been longed for by Ecuadorians for a long time and that a normality had finally come with the “successful” vaccination drive started from January 2021.
In recent weeks, five out of every 100 PCR tests in Ecuador came out positive, “a clear sign that we have practically defeated COVID-19,” said Lasso.
Ecuadorian Health Minister Ximena Garzon said that Ecuador had registered no outbreaks after the recent Carnival and Easter holidays and that the 5-percent positivity rate in PCR tests had been maintained for four consecutive weeks in the country.
“We are in the epidemiological transition phase, that is, we are going from an epidemic to endemic indicators, and we want to continue like this,” Garzon said.
In the past four weeks, 1,073 COVID-19 infections and one related death had been reported, indicating a drop in the epidemiological curve, according to the health minister.
Ecuador has reported a total of 869,124 cases and 35,588 deaths from the disease as of Thursday, according to the Ecuadorian health ministry.
Over 34 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered throughout the South American country, where 13.8 million people, or 82.9 percent of the population, have completed the two-dose schedule.
China’s pharmaceutical company Sinovac is Ecuador’s leading supplier of COVID-19 vaccines, having provided around 19 million doses of vaccines, according to the company. — NNN-XINHUA
