SINGAPORE: A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet has shown that in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 and 2021, the average life expectancy of people worldwide decreased by 1.6 years.
Prior to the pandemic, mortality rates had been falling steadily over the past seven decades. COVID-19, however, reversed this. From 1950 to 2021, life expectancy around the globe went from 49 to 71.7 years.
However, among men over the age of 15, mortality rates in 2020 and 2021 increased by 22 per cent, and for women, they rose by 17 per cent.
Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia saw the highest increase in excess mortality, at 2.7 deaths per 1,000 people. On the other end of the scale is Southeast Asia, which has the smallest rise in excess mortality, at .24 per 1000.
Dr Austin Schumacher, the researcher from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) who led the Lancet study, said in a statement, “For adults worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a more profound impact than any event seen in half a century, including conflicts and natural disasters.”
On the other hand, child mortality has continued to decline, with 500,000 fewer deaths across the globe in the under-5 age group in 2021 in comparison to 2019.
From 2019 to 2021, only 32 out of the 204 countries in the Lancet study (15.7 per cent) showed that life expectancy increased.
Dr Schumacher pointed out that the decline in life expectancy in 84 per cent of the countries in the study demonstrated “the devastating potential impacts” of new viruses.
Significantly, the United States experienced the highest excess mortality rate in those years in comparison to other high-wealth countries.
In 2020 and 2021, an additional 1.59 per 1,000 people died in the US than would have if the COVID-19 pandemic had not occurred.
For comparison’s sake, the global excess mortality rate is 1.04 per 1,000 people. Italy (1.38 excess deaths), Monaco (1.30 excess deaths), and Portugal (1.05 excess deaths) are also among the high-income nations with a higher mortality rate due to the pandemic.
There were 15.9 million excess deaths from 2020 to 2021, one million more than the World Health Organization previously estimated. This was due, either directly or indirectly, to the pandemic.
While Mexico City, Peru, and Bolivia are among the countries where life expectancy declined the most, Barbados and New Zealand are some of the countries with the lowest rate of excess deaths during the pandemic.
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