EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE COVID-19 LETHALITY RATE IN THE STATE OF BAHIA (2020-2023)

The COVID-19 pandemic is a major public health emergency. In addition to being a new disease, its rapid transmission, symptomatic variety, and variants have made it difficult to control the disease and contributed to high lethality and mortality rates worldwide. The objective of this study is to analyze the spatiotemporal incidence, lethality, and mortality of COVID-19 in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil from 2020 to 2023. An ecological study was carried out, with time series analyses of COVID-19 lethality rates in the state of Bahia during the first and second waves of the disease in the region, considering the period from March 2020 to July 2023. The daily percentage variation was calculated by Prais-Winsten, and served to analyze the increasing, decreasing, or stationary trend, considering a significance level of 95%. The prevalence of the lethality coefficient was in the economically active female population (30-39 years old), brown, the peak occurred in the period from April to July 2020 and 2021, with a stationary and decreasing trend and in the period from 2022 to 2023, the trend was stationary. With the implementation of control strategies: contingency plan, isolation, respiratory etiquette and, above all, vaccination, the disease showed a decrease, the lethality coefficient regressed with a stationary trend. The action of epidemiological surveillance and disease prevention and control strategies contributed to the regression of the lethality coefficient with a decreasing trend.