World lost 20.5 million years of life to COVID-19, study finds

• More than 20.5 million years of life may have been lost worldwide due to COVID-19, a new study has been discovered.
• To calculate the years of life lost, the researchers compared the age of people who died from COVID-19 to their average life expectancy.
• People over the age of 75 account for a quarter of the years of life lost to the pandemic, according to the study. Men lost more years than women.
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Globally, the average person is expected to live to age 73. But the pandemic has shortened more than a million lives, according to a new study.

Researchers compared the ages of people who died from COVID-19 to their average life expectancy. When a person dies prematurely, the gap between the two is considered years of life lost due to the pandemic.

The results, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, show that more than 20.5 million years of life in total may have been lost globally to COVID-19. On average, each person who died from the coronavirus lost 16 years of life.

Almost 45% of those lost years involved people aged 55 to 75. People over the age of 75 accounted for 25% of years lost, although this group experienced the majority of deaths. Those under 55 accounted for about 30% of the years lost.

The data, the researchers wrote, is expected to spark “heightened awareness” that public health policies during the pandemic should also protect young people. The researchers also suggested that countries should pay more attention to reducing the number of deaths among men, who die from COVID-19 at higher rates than women.

Men lost 44% more years than women

Horacio Villalobos / Corbis / Getty Images

The researchers behind the new study – from Finland, Germany, Spain, the UK and the US – looked at data from more than 1.3 million people who died from COVID – 19 in 81 countries until January 6. Only about 274,000 people in this cohort reached their full life expectancy before dying from the disease.

Men were hit harder than women: The study found that men lost 44% more years than women due to premature deaths from COVID-19. On average, the men in the study lived to age 71, compared to 76 for the women.

A December study found that men are almost three times more likely to require intensive care treatment for COVID-19 than women and 1.4 times more likely to die from the disease.

Scientists still don’t know why. Some research suggests that women develop a stronger T-cell response to coronavirus, which helps their immune systems identify and destroy the pathogen. But in some countries, men also smoke more than women and have higher rates of pre-existing health problems, which could make them vulnerable to more serious consequences.

But the ratio of lives lost between men and women was not the same in all countries. Men in low-income countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Peru lost many more years than women, while high-income countries like Finland and Canada recorded relatively similar figures between genders.

Apu Gomes / AFP via Getty Images

This could simply be because high-income countries often have stronger treatment resources, but it is also possible that female deaths are less likely to be recorded or directly attributed to COVID-19 in countries with less risk. low income. In some places, women do not have access to transportation to hospital or cannot leave their families for medical treatment.

In general, more lives were also lost among younger groups in low- and middle-income countries.

Previous studies have attributed this pattern to a higher level of residential overcrowding in low-income cities or a higher incidence of pre-existing conditions among non-elderly populations in developing countries. Another factor could be that young people in these countries are more often forced to work in jobs with a high risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

More years lost than seasonal flu

Toni L. Sandys / The Washington Post via Getty Images

It is now understood that the coronavirus is far more deadly than the flu: it has killed more than 2.4 million people worldwide in 13 months. Respiratory illnesses caused by seasonal influenza, on the other hand, typically kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people per year.

But the new study also determined that the coronavirus has reduced global lifespan by an inordinate number of years.

In highly developed countries that have been heavily affected by the pandemic, research has shown that the number of years of life lost due to COVID-19 can be two to nine times higher than due to seasonal influenza .

Of course, the transmission of the coronavirus continues around the world and some countries have not finished collecting data on COVID-19-related deaths from the end of 2020. Thus, the total number of years lost due to COVID-19, the study authors wrote, could “increase substantially in the coming months.”