He said 189 people were rescued in the disaster. He has not said how many tickets were sold, and representatives of the nightclub have declined to answer questions.
“This hurts so much,” Mr. Méndez said, noting that he would scale back the number of rescuers.
On Wednesday night, the authorities announced that the operation would officially shift from search and rescue to the recovery of bodies.
The more than 300 rescuers had “exhausted all reasonable possibilities” of finding anyone alive, the government said in a statement. The statement stressed that the excavation for bodies would continue.
“We are not abandoning anybody,” Mr. Méndez repeated.
Monday night at Jet Set was a decades-old tradition in Santo Domingo, popular with athletes, politicians and the business class — and that was reflected in the fatalities: A governor died, as did a family of prominent bankers and two former Major League Baseball players.
The body of the merengue singer who was performing, Rubby Pérez, was pulled out of the wreckage Wednesday morning.
Hogla Enecia Pérez contributed reporting.
