The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global disruption of several services, including routine immunizations. This effect has been described in several countries, but there are few detailed studies in Latin America and no reports in Ecuador. Therefore, this work aims to quantify the reduction in routine immunizations for infants during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador. 2018, 2019, and 2020 data were obtained from the Ministry of Health, Ecuador. The number of doses and the extent of immunization coverage was descriptively compared for four vaccines: rotavirus (ROTA), poliovirus (PV), pneumococcal (PCV), and pentavalent (PENTA) vaccines. There was no significant difference in doses applied during the 2018 and 2019 years. However, a significant (p < 0.05) drop of 137,000 delivered doses was observed in 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic years. Reductions in the percentage of coverage were more pronounced for the PENTA vaccine (17.7%), followed by PV (16.4%), ROTA (12%), and PCV vaccines (10.7%). Spatial analysis shows a severe impact on vaccination coverage on provinces from the Coast and Highland regions of the country. The pandemic has significantly impacted the immunization programs for infants across Ecuador. This retrospective analysis shows an urgent need to protect vulnerable zones and populations during public health emergencies.

Microalgae are photosynthetic microorganisms with high lipid content, capable of degrading nutrients from wastewater. In this research, two strains of microalgae, Scenedesmus sp. and Chlorella vulgaris were cultivated in sterilized pig slaughterhouse wastewater using outdoor flat photobioreactors. Cell growth, total lipids, free fatty acids (FFA), fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and physicochemical parameters of wastewater were measured. The results indicated that pig slaughterhouse wastewater is adequate to grow these species of microalgae, obtaining a higher biomass growth for Scenedesmus sp. compared to Chlorella vulgaris (0.41 g/L vs. 0.2 g/L); additionally, these species can be used in bioremediation processes due to the nutrient removal achieved in terms of Total Nitrogen (TN), Total Phosphorous (TP) and Total Organic Carbon (TOC). Methylcyclohexane, chloroform: methanol (1:2) and ethyl acetate had better yield of lipids and FFA. The percentages of FAMEs from FFA were in the range of 52.5–89.5 wt% for Scenedesmus sp. and for Chlorella vulgaris from 52–80.5 wt%. Although the values of lipids, FFA and FAME are below of the range reported by other authors, the use of this type of wastewater as culture medium for the two species cannot be ruled out for lipid extraction in biofuel production.

The application of different sources of nutrients to the soil with varying degrees of solubility, as well as the use of organic and inorganic fertilizers, can generate different responses in agroecosystems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of different fertilization options on the quality of forage in the conservation-based agroecosystems of neotropical savannas. Both perennial species Brachiaria dictyoneura and the legume Centrosema macrocarpum are associated with corn cultivation. Four fertilization treatments were evaluated within each cover crop, applying 150 kg ha-1 of nitrogen, 150 kg ha-1 of P2O5, 100 kg ha-1 of K2O, and varying the source of phosphorus, being the treatments distributed as follows: i) phosphoric rock, high dose of phosphorus (100% of P2O5 as phosphoric rock), ii) diammonium phosphate, high dose of P (50% of P2O5 as phosphoric rock and 50% as diammonium phosphate), iii) biological fertilization, low dose of P (25% of P2O5 as phosphoric rock and inoculation with biofertilizer based on native arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, such as Gigaspora, Scutellospora, Acaulospora, and Glomus), and finally, iv) the unfertilized treatment. The results show that under direct sowing and the use of biological fertilization sources using phosphoric rock as a source of P, similar and even higher levels of raw protein can be reached than when using fertilization with soluble sources such as the diammonium phosphate, which induce greater sustainability of the cover biomass, being an alternative in the management of this types of agroecosystems.

Filamentous fungal infections are an important cause of systemic infections in immunocompromised patients. Fusarium genus members potentially cause disseminated infections, especially in patients with catheters, due to the ability to adhere to these devices. We describe a case of fatal fungemia due to Fusarium oxysporum in a patient with COVID-19 in Ecuador. The genus identification was carried out with conventional techniques and species identification by molecular and phylogenetic techniques through sequencing of the ITS region.