NEW DELHI: On the fourth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study has said that global life expectancy dropped by 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021, a sharp reversal from past improvements. The research is published in The Lancet journal.
COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. The pandemic claimed over 7 million lives globally, and more than half a million lives were lost in India. While the WHO has officially declared the pandemic to be over in May 2023, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, causing the COVID infection, continues to mutate and infect large numbers of people worldwide.
The Lancet study said that it is one of the first to fully evaluate demographic trends in the context of the first two years of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and it could have implications for health systems, economies and societies around the world.
The findings also included those of an ageing worldwide population.
The study found that life expectancy declined in 84 per cent of countries and territories during this time. This demonstrated the “devastating potential impacts of novel pathogens’’, the researchers said.
Places such as Mexico City, Peru and Bolivia experienced some of the largest drops, the study found.
The researchers also found a marked increase in adult mortality rates globally during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, reversing past decreasing trends.
However, child mortality continued to drop amid the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit more slowly than in earlier years, with half a million fewer deaths among children under five years in 2021 compared to 2019, they found.
Source: The Pioneer