The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a protracted shock to life expectancy levels, leading to global mortality changes “unprecedented” in the last 70 years, a study has suggested.
The research from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research analysed data from from 29 countries in Europe, as well as Chile and the US.
The researchers concluded that life expectancy in 2021 remained lower than expected across all 29 countries, had pre-pandemic trends continued.
What’s more, the study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, has argued that, while previous global epidemics have seen fairly rapid ‘bounce backs’ to life expectancy levels, this has not happened so far with Covid-19.
The scale and magnitude of Covid-19 on mortality has confounded claims it has had no more impact than a flu-like illness, the study has argued.
By comparison, life expectancy losses during recurring flu epidemics over the second-half of the twentieth century have been much smaller and less widespread than those seen in the pandemic.
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A clear geographical divide appeared in 2021, the researchers concluded. Most countries in western Europe experienced life expectancy bounce-backs from the sharp losses in 2020.
Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and France saw complete bounce-backs, returning to pre-pandemic 2019 life expectancy levels.
England and Wales saw partial bounce-backs from 2020 levels in 2021. Life expectancy in Scotland and Northern Ireland, however, remained at the same depressed level as 2020.
However, eastern Europe and the US witnessed worsening or compounded losses in life expectancy over the same period. The scale of life expectancy losses during the Covid-19 pandemic in eastern Europe were akin to those last seen at the break-up of the Soviet Union, according to the research, the study argued.
This east-west divide in life expectancy during Covid-19 generally reflected bigger losses in countries that had lower pre-pandemic life expectancy levels. Bulgaria, for example, was the worst-hit of the countries studied, with a decline in life expectancy of nearly 43 months, over two years of the pandemic.
According to the paper: “Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia suffered substantially higher life expectancy deficits in 2021 compared to 2020, indicating a worsening mortality burden over the course of the pandemic.”
In addition to pre-pandemic life expectancy, there appeared to be a “vaccination effect”, which again followed the same east-west divide in Europe. Countries with higher proportions of fully vaccinated people experienced smaller life expectancy deficits.
Older ages, especially those over 80 who had seen the bulk of deaths in 2020, benefited from vaccine protection and a decline in excess mortality in 2021, the study argued.
Dr Ridhi Kashyap, a study co-author from Oxford, said: “A notable shift between 2020 and 2021 was that the age patterns of excess mortality shifted in 2021 towards younger age groups, as vaccines began to protect the old.”
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But there were ‘outliers’, as Dr Jonas Schöley, study co-author from the Max Planck Institute, outlined. “Countries, such as Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and France, managed a recovery to pre-pandemic levels of life expectancy because they managed to protect both the old and the young,” he said.
The research team also voiced concern about the possible wider international impact of the pandemic. As the paper concluded: “It is plausible that countries with ineffective public health responses will see a protracted health crisis induced by the pandemic with medium-term stalls in life expectancy improvements, while other regions manage a smoother recovery to return to pre-pandemic trends.”
