Covid-19: life expectancy drops sharply in several countries, including the United States – LCI

The historical consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have not finished being felt. Demographically this time, a report published Monday in the scientific journal International Journal of Epidemiology demonstrates the drop in life expectancy following the appearance of the virus.

In 27 of the 29 countries studied by researchers at the University of Oxford, the University of Southern Denmark and the German Max-Planck Institute, life expectancy at birth declined between 2019 and 2020. One Sudden drop, according to them, mainly attributable to the increase in mortality among people over 60 and in general to victims of Covid-19. “It had taken on average 5.6 years for these countries to gain a year of life expectancy, it was wiped out in 2020 by the Covid”, note the researchers.

It was first in the United States and Lithuania, then in Bulgaria, Poland, Spain, Chile, Italy and Belgium, that the statistical drops were the most impressive according to the study. Last July, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the US federal public health agency, found last July that Americans’ life expectancy at birth has increased from 78.8 years. in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. A drop of one and a half years on average over a year, the largest drop recorded since World War II according to the agency.

Such reductions of more than a full year were documented in 11 countries for men, and 8 for women, which were counted separately. In early September, the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat) announced that the virus has reduced life expectancy by 1.2 years in 2020, and by more than four years in some provinces hardest hit by the pandemic, in particular the region of Bergamo.

In France, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) noted, last March, a drop in life expectancy in 2020 “more pronounced than in 2015, when the winter flu epidemic was very deadly.” According to her data, it was now 85.1 years for women (a drop of 0.5 from 2019) and 79.1 years for men (-0.6).

The researchers behind this study, however, insist on the temporary nature of their work. The year 2021 indeed promises to undermine demography, depending on the progress of vaccination in the world. In addition, the consequences of long Covid, delayed care and the health effects of the global economic contraction caused by successive confinements should have an impact on these statistics in the long term. “The consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health of populations are likely to last a long time”, assure the researchers.