QUITO, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador is close to controlling the COVID-19 pandemic if it can keep the positivity rate of the virus, as well as infections and deaths down, Health Minister Ximena Garzon stated Monday.

       The official said that the positivity rate dropped from 61 percent at the beginning of the year to the current 5 percent, adding that "if we maintain this, we can say that Ecuador has controlled the pandemic" and become "one of the first countries in the region" to do so.

       The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that a COVID-19 positivity rate of less than 5 percent is one of the epidemiological criteria for calculating whether the pandemic is under control.

       Garzon explained that Ecuador owes its advance to the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19 that targeted 16.1 million people.

       "We went from 2.9 percent coverage (in May 2021) to 89 percent of Ecuadorians five years old and over vaccinated with one dose," she said, adding that more than 85 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and about 5.2 million have received a booster dose.

       The South American country had accumulated 858,920 COVID-19 cases and 25,225 deaths from the disease as of Sunday, according to the latest report from the health ministry.