Covid caused biggest drop in life expectancy since World War II: UK study

London

The COVID-19 pandemic led to biggest decrease in lifeexpectancy since the World War II, and wiped out years of progress onmortality, according to a study published on Monday by the University of Oxford.

The research team assembled an unprecedented dataset onmortality from 29 countries, spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile --countries for which official death registrations for 2020 had been published.

The study, published in the International Journal ofEpidemiology, found that 27 of the 29 countries saw reductions in lifeexpectancy in 2020, and at a scale which wiped out years of progress onmortality.

Women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries were found tohave a lower expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015, a year in which lifeexpectancy was already negatively affected by a significant flu season.

"For Western European countries such as Spain, Englandand Wales, Italy, Belgium, among others, the last time such large magnitudes ofdeclines in life expectancy at birth were observed in a single year was duringWW-II," said study's co-lead author Jose Manuel Aburto, from Oxford'sLeverhulme Center for Demographic Science (LCDS).

"However, the scale of the life expectancy losses wasstark across most countries studied, with 22 countries included in the studyexperiencing larger losses than half a year in 2020," Aburto said.

The researchers noted that females in eight countries andmales in 11 countries experienced losses larger than a year.

It took on average 5.6 years for these countries to achievea one-year increase in life expectancy recently, while the progress was wipedout over the course of 2020 by COVID-19, they said.

Life expectancy, also known as period life expectancy,refers to the average age to which a newborn lives if current death ratescontinued for their whole life. It does not predict an actual lifespan.

Across most of the 29 countries, males saw larger lifeexpectancy declines than females, according to the researchers.

The largest declines in life expectancy were observed amongmales in the US, who saw a decline of 2.2 years relative to 2019 levels,followed by Lithuanian males (1.7 years), they said.

"The large declines in life expectancy observed in theUS can partly be explained by the notable increase in mortality at working agesobserved in 2020," said study co-lead author, Ridhi Kashyap from LCDS.

"In the US, increases in mortality in the under 60 agegroup contributed most significantly to life expectancy declines, whereasacross most of Europe increases in mortality above age 60 contributed moresignificantly," Kashyap said.

The team's analysis also shows that most life expectancyreductions across different countries were attributable to official COVID-19deaths.

"While we know that there are several issues linked tothe counting of COVID-19 deaths, such as inadequate testing ormisclassification, the fact that our results highlight such a large impact thatis directly attributable to COVID-19 shows how devastating a shock it has beenfor many countries," Kashyap said.

"We urgently call for the publication and availabilityof more disaggregated data from a wider-range of countries, including low- andmiddle-income countries, to better understand the impacts of the pandemicglobally," she added.