The international community continues to assess the global consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. New research carried out Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in the USA, covered 204 countries around the world. The work analyzed changes in life expectancy.
Scientists were able to find out that in 2020 and 2021, life expectancy decreased in 84 percent of the world’s countries. This resulted in a global average decline of 1.6 years in the expected rate. This is the first time this has happened in decades, which typically saw a steady rise in life expectancy. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a greater impact than any war or natural disaster in the last half century.
The authors of the work determined that the mortality rate in 2020 and 2021 among people over 15 years of age increased by 22 percent for men and 17 percent for women. Life expectancy fell the most in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia.
At the same time, it is noted that the pandemic had virtually no impact on child mortality. Half a million fewer children under five died in 2021 than in 2019.
The authors of the work also analyzed the excess mortality rate. During the two years of the pandemic under review, 15.9 million people died from the virus and complications associated with it. This is more than the WHO previously reported. This metric compares the total number of deaths with how many would have been expected if the pandemic had not happened.
Countries with the lowest excess mortality were Barbados, New Zealand, and Antigua and Barbuda.
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