Leading Dominican epidemiologist Clemente Terrero has framed 2025 as a year defined by widespread viral respiratory infection activity across the Dominican Republic, in an exclusive interview with local newspaper Hoy.
According to Terrero, the country’s public health landscape grew unusually complex throughout the year, with as many as seven distinct respiratory viruses circulating in the population at the same time. The dominant pathogens driving the surge were influenza, COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and a range of other common respiratory pathogens, which collectively created a far-reaching public health burden.
The specialist traced this sharp rise in respiratory virus circulation directly to long-term shifts triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. During more than two years of widespread social isolation and pandemic mitigation measures, transmission of these common respiratory viruses dropped dramatically, leaving a larger portion of the population with no recent exposure or built-up immunity. Once global and local social activities resumed, the suppressed viruses rebounded rapidly, driving the large-scale surge seen in 2025. Terrero emphasized this rebound effect is not unique to the Dominican Republic, noting the same pattern has been documented in other nations including Spain and China.
Of all the circulating respiratory viruses, influenza emerged as the most prevalent illness of 2025, with children and young adults bearing the brunt of infections. Co-circulation with multiple other respiratory pathogens pushed up rates of outpatient medical visits and hospital admissions across the country’s healthcare system, placing added strain on public health infrastructure.
Beyond respiratory infections, Terrero’s analysis outlined a shifting landscape for mosquito-borne disease in the Dominican Republic. The country recorded its worst-ever dengue epidemic in 2023, with more than 27,000 confirmed cases recorded across the nation. But after the 2023 outbreak, driven by dengue virus serotype 3, the virus largely stopped circulating as the population of susceptible people was depleted. Terrero noted that he did not encounter a single confirmed dengue case from January 2025 until just one week before his interview, marking an extraordinary lull after the historic 2023 surge.
Despite this current pause, Terrero issued a warning that a new serotype, serotype 2, which has not previously circulated widely in the Dominican Republic, could trigger a new large-scale outbreak in the near future. This lull in 2025 also aligns with broader regional trends across Latin America, which saw total dengue cases jump from 2 million to more than 10 million in 2023, marking an unprecedented public health crisis across the region.
Another growing concern highlighted in Terrero’s analysis is the sharp increase in leptospirosis cases across the Dominican Republic in 2025. The bacterial disease, which spreads through contact with water contaminated with animal urine, disproportionately impacted working-age young adults and rural communities. Both total incidence and mortality rates from leptospirosis exceeded levels recorded in previous years, solidifying its status as one of the country’s most pressing ongoing epidemiological challenges.
Breaking down the impact of 2025’s disease activity by age group, Terrero explained that respiratory pathogens such as influenza and RSV primarily affected children and young adults, while leptospirosis hit working-age adults hardest. Dengue, by contrast, tends to spread fairly evenly across most demographic groups, though the 2023 epidemic saw a disproportionate impact on children under 15 years old.
Framing 2025 as a critical period of epidemiological transition for the Dominican Republic, Terrero summarized the year as a mix of shifting threats: respiratory viruses dominated national disease activity, dengue entered an unexpected lull after its 2023 peak, and leptospirosis emerged as a growing risk. To address these dynamic changes, he concluded that the country must prioritize strengthening national epidemiological surveillance systems, expanding environmental prevention measures for vector-borne and waterborne diseases, and sustaining high coverage of immunization for all vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases. “These changes require us to be prepared, because epidemiology is dynamic and viruses always find a way to return,” Terrero emphasized.