The pandemic has left its mark – Greece among the countries where life expectancy has decreased

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What the research showed by the Institute for Demographic Research of the German Max Planck Institute and the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science of the University of Oxford

The pandemic Covid-19 caused a prolonged two-year “shock” in life expectancy levels, leading to global changes in mortality unprecedented in the past 70 years, a new international scientific study by leading European demographers shows. The analysis of data from 29 European countries, the USA and Chile found that life expectancy in 2021 remained lower than expected in almost all countries relative to pre-pandemic levels.

However, after the global decline in life expectancy in 2020, seven Western European countries showed an increase in 2021, while in the rest of Europe (especially Eastern) and the USA the 2021 the downward trend in life expectancy. This, according to the scientists, shows that some countries’ populations were affected last year by the pandemic more severely than others.

His researchers Institute for Demographic Research of the German Max Planck Institute and the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, University of Oxfordled by Dr. Jonas Shelley of the former, who made the relevant publication in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed death data from 2015-2021.

The researchers spoke of a clear geographical West-East dividing line that became apparent in 2021, as most Western European countries showed a smaller or larger recovery in life expectancy after its large decrease in 2020. They even found that in four countries (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden) life expectancy in 2021 had almost fully returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

According to Shelley, the four countries above “managed to return life expectancy to pre-pandemic levels because they managed to protect both the elderly and the young”.

In several countries (among which Greece) life expectancy also showed a decline in 2021. Especially in Eastern Europe, the scale of losses in life expectancy due to the pandemic was found to be comparable to the crisis of premature mortality that had occurred during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The country with the biggest hit to life expectancy is Bulgaria, with a decrease of almost 43 months during the pandemic biennium 2020-21. Also Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Chile, showed a significantly greater loss of life expectancy in 2021 than in 2020, which – according to researchers – is related to increasing deaths in the course of the pandemic.

Life expectancy is a useful indicator of the general health of a population. Its changes in the midst of a pandemic in 2021 probably reflect differences between developed countries regarding e.g. with the percentage of vaccinated or with non-pharmaceutical interventions.

Analysis of mortality by age group shows that deaths due to Covid-19 in 2021 were proportionally more among people under 60 than in 2020, when older people (especially those over 80) were most affected. The study also found that a country’s lower vaccination rate last year was associated with reduced life expectancy. The countries with the highest rates of fully vaccinated were those with the smallest declines in life expectancy.

The researchers pointed out that in previous global epidemics a recovery in life expectancy had occurred relatively quickly. But this was not the case with Covid-19, disproving claims that the coronavirus had no more serious impact than a flu. They point out that life expectancy losses during previous influenza epidemics in the second half of the 20th century were much smaller in magnitude and less widespread than in the current pandemic.

RES-EMP

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