Covid causes decrease in life expectancy in western Europe: Study

The pandemic has caused the biggest decline in life expectancy in western Europe since the Second World War. Researchers found that the Covid-19 outbreak has affected years of progress in life expectancy.

The study by Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science analysed the data from over 29 countries across Europe, the US, and Chile. Males in the US saw the biggest decline with 2.2 years less than in 2019. Lithuanian males ranked second with a decline of 1.7 years, reported The Guardian.

One of the authors, Dr. José Manuel Aburto, said that a decline of such a large magnitude was observed in countries like Spain, England, and Wales, Italy, Belgium during the second world war.

Males experienced larger life expectancy decline than females. "Females in eight countries and males in 11 countries experienced losses larger than a year. To contextualise, it took on average 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy recently," he added.

Another author, Dr Ridhi Kashyap, said that the researchers were aware of several issues linked to the counting of Covid deaths, such as inadequate testing or misclassification. But 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, reported The Guardian.

The study is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.