Vaccination coverage and safety in Cameroon: descriptive assessment of COVID-19 infection in vaccinated individuals

ABSTRACT

Objective. Toassess national vaccination coverage, adverse events following immunization (AEFI) and evaluate the vaccination status in COVID infected patients. Methods. Sociodemographic data on vaccination and clinical characteristics of Covid-19 cases were extracted from the national COVID-19databases of the Public Health Emergency Center and the Expanded Program on Immunization. Result. A total number of 808229 out of 27 869965 (2.9%) were fully immunized on 13 February 2022 in the Cameroon. The most requested vaccine was Janssen with 48.24% of total doses administered. Women were less vaccinated than men and with a remarkable disparity in northern regions of the country. The Adamawa region presented the best performance 11.3% of adults fully immunized. Despite vaccinal coverage still insufficient among health care worker, they were the most vaccinated among priority groups (43.4%). Only 8% COVID-19 cases were vaccinated and 0.22 % of all vaccinated still developed COVID-19. Tolerability assessment identified 1.83 non-serious AEFI and 0.1 serious AEFI per 1000 doses administered. Only 7% of vaccinated individual still developed laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Conclusion. COVID-19vaccination coverage is still low in Cameroon compared to the target of 60%. Although data completeness is still an issue, the protection against severe forms of the disease provided by the vaccines currently used is quite satisfactory. There is however a need to intensify all strategies to make people adhere to vaccination in order to protectthem against severe form of the disease.