Vaccination and Mortality from COVID-19 in the Dominican, February 2020- June 2022 Republic,

Abstract

Introduction. To end the COVID-19 pandemic, a large part of the world had to be immune to the virus, and the surest way to achieve this was with a vaccine. The objective was to describe the impact of vaccination on COVID-19 mortality in the Dominican Republic. Population and Methods. Exploratory ecological study. Confirmed and deceased cases of COVID-19 reported (616,318) and cases vaccinated against the disease (15,820,105) were analyzed. Anyone who had received at least 2 doses of the vaccine and was registered in the national immunization database was considered to have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Frequencies, mortality, lethality and vaccination coverage, Pearson's correlation coefficient and linear regression were calculated. Results. We found an overall mortality and case fatality rate of 10.1/100,000 and 0.4%, respectively. In 2022, the vaccination coverage was 80.7% (8,572,478/10,621,938). Among the ten regions compared in 2022, there was a borderline statistically significant moderate negative correlation between coverage and mortality (r= -0.61) and coverage-lethality (-0.59) and a decrease in mortality and lethality of 10% for every 10% increase in coverage when comparing the regions of the country. Discussion. The higher the vaccination coverage against COVID-19, the lower the COVID-19 mortality and case-fatality. We recommend increasing and maintaining a high vaccination against COVID-19.