GENEVA (EFE).—The average life expectancy worldwide has dropped by 1.8 years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and now stands at 71.4 years, according to public health statistics released yesterday by the World Health Organization (WHO).
These data, updated to the end of 2021, imply that practically a decade of progress in terms of years of life gained has been lost.
In 2020, the first year of the acute phase of the pandemic, 0.6 years of life expectancy were lost, but the following year – when the health emergency continued with the emergence of new variants – the impact was greater, with 1.1 years lost.
Years of healthy life expectancy (the number of years a person can live in full health) were also lost during this biennium: minus 0.7 years for men and minus 0.5 for women in 2020, and 0.8 years and 1.1 years, respectively, in 2021.
“Significant improvements in population health were achieved before the pandemic, but demographic and epidemiological profiles changed during the pandemic years,” WHO expert Haidong Wang commented during the presentation of these data.
Although the decline in life expectancy was widespread, the report highlights that the effects of the pandemic have been uneven across regions.
The Americas and Southeast Asia were the hardest hit, with life expectancy reduced by three years in both cases.
In addition, both continents also experienced a reduction in healthy life expectancy of 2.5 years between 2019 and 2021.
The impact also differed depending on the income level of the countries: 0.6 years of life expectancy lost in low-income countries and 2.4 years in lower-middle-income countries.
The report indicates that Covid-19 became the third cause of mortality worldwide in 2020 and the second in 2021, causing almost 13 million deaths during this period.
Before the pandemic, non-communicable diseases such as stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s or diabetes were the main causes of death (74% of all deaths in 2019).
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2024-07-03 15:47:09