It took on average 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy,” says Dr Aburto, co-lead author of the study.
The findings remain published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, which found that 27 of the 29 countries for which official death records for last year had got published saw reductions in life expectancy in 2020, at a scale wiping out their years of progress reducing the mortality rate.
The study indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic had led the world to the biggest drop in life expectancy since World War II. Also, wiping out years of progress on mortality mentions the study published on Monday by the University of Oxford.
The research team led by scientists at Oxford University assembled an unprecedented dataset on mortality from as many as 29 countries, spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile–the countries that had their official death registrations for 2020 got published.
Since World War II in Western Europe, the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered life expectancy losses not seen for a long time.
The study also mentions that this loss exceeded those observed around the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc in central and Eastern European countries.
From the Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Dr Jose Manuel Aburto, also the co-lead author of the study, said, “For Western European countries such as Spain, England and Wales, Italy, Belgium, among others, the last time such large magnitudes of declines in life expectancy at birth got observed in a single year was during WW-II.”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) last week has estimated that for the first time in 40 years, the life expectancy for UK men had fallen because of the impact of Covid-19.
The estimates showed that a boy born between 2018 and 2020 will live until 79, which came down from the previous record of 79.2 for 2015-17.
The variations got observed between the different parts of the UK in life expectancy. In simpler words, the average age to which a newborn baby would live if current death rates (mortality) continued for their whole life.
The data says that the life expectancy for males in England has fallen from 79.5 years in 2015-17 to 79.3 years in the period 2018-20, while Scotland showed an estimated fall from 77 to 76.8.
Surprisingly it rose slightly in Northern Ireland from 78.4 to 78.7 and stayed broadly unchanged in Wales at 78.3.
Males saw larger life expectancy declines than female
In most of the 29 countries involved in the study, males saw a marginally larger life expectancy decline than female residents.
The largest declines in life expectancy got observed among males from the US, who witnessed a drop of 2.2 years relative to 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian males (1.7 years).
Ridhi Kashyap, another co-led author from the varsity, explained that the vast declines in life expectancy observed across the US can be partly explained by “the notable increase in mortality at working ages observed in 2020.”
The US has seen a rise in mortality in the under 60 age group, contributing significantly to life expectancy declines. In contrast, a surge in mortality above age 60 has contributed more considerably across most of Europe.
2015 was a year that saw life expectancy being negatively affected by a significant flu season was surpassed when men in 10 countries and women in 15 countries got found to have a lower expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015.
Further, Aburto said that the scale of the life expectancy losses was larger across most countries studied, “22 countries included in our study experienced larger losses than half a year in 2020. Females in eight countries and males in 11 countries experienced losses larger than a year,” he said.
He emphasised that it took on an average 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy recently but in vain.
The progress remains wiped and halted throughout 2020 due to Covid-19. “Females in eight countries and males in 11 countries experienced losses larger than a year.”
Dr Ridhi Kashyap told reporters that researchers were aware of the many issues linked to counting Covid deaths, including inadequate testing, misclassification, etc.
However, she added that “the fact that our results highlight such a large impact that is directly attributable to Covid-19 shows how devastating a shock it has been for many countries”.
The impact of Covid-19 on lifespans remains unclear and proclaimed to be greater in less developed countries not included in the research.
She urged the call for the publication and availability of more disaggregated data from a broader range of countries, asking for the inclusion of low- and middle-income countries “to better understand the impacts of the pandemic globally.”
