In most of the 29 countries, men saw a greater decline in life expectancy than women.
London:
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the biggest reduction in life expectancy since World War II and wiped out years of progress on mortality, according to a study published by the University of Oxford on Monday.
The research team gathered an unprecedented dataset on mortality rates from 29 countries spanning much of Europe, the Americas and Chile – the countries for which official death registrations for 2020 were published.
The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found that 27 of 29 countries saw a reduction in life expectancy in 2020, and on a scale that erased years of progress on mortality.
Women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries were found to have lower birth expectancy in 2020 than in 2015, a year in which life expectancy was already negatively affected by a significant flu season.
“For Western European countries such as Spain, England and Wales, Italy, Belgium, among others, the last time such a large drop in life expectancy at birth in a single year was seen was during WW-II,” study co-author Oxford Lead author Jose Manuel Eberto, of the K Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science (LCDS).
“However, the scale of loss of life expectancy was in most of the countries studied, with 22 countries included in the study experiencing a loss larger than half a year in 2020,” said Eberto he said.
The researchers noted that women in eight countries and men in 11 countries suffered more than a year.
It took an average of 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy recently, while progress during 2020 was wiped out by COVID-19, he said.
Life expectancy, also known as period life expectancy, refers to the average age to which a newborn would survive if current mortality rates continued for their entire lives. It does not predict the actual lifespan.
According to the researchers, in most of the 29 countries, men saw a greater decline in life expectancy than women.
He said the biggest drop in life expectancy was seen among men in the US, who saw a decline of 2.2 years from 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian men (1.7 years).
“The large decline in life expectancy seen in the US can be partly explained by the significant increase in working-age mortality in 2020,” said study co-lead author, Ridhi Kashyap, LCDS.
Kashyap said, “In the US, the increase in mortality in the under 60 age group contributed most significantly to the decline in life expectancy, while in most of Europe, the increase in mortality over the age of 60 contributed more significantly. “
The team’s analysis also shows that most of the reduction in life expectancy in various countries was due to official COVID-19 deaths.
“While we know that there are many issues associated with counting COVID-19 deaths, such as inadequate testing or misclassification, the fact that our results highlight such a large impact that is directly attributable to COVID-19 indicates That’s how devastating it is. Has been for many countries,” Kashyap said.
“We urgently call for the publication and availability of more dissimilar data from a wider range of countries, including low- and middle-income countries, to better understand the effects of the pandemic globally,” he said. PTI
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