Life expectancy in most countries took a hit during the COVID pandemic. But the U.S. has seen a sharper drop-off than most European countries and Chile—and it still hasn’t recovered.
COVID was still the primary cause of excess deaths in the U.S., Europe and Chile in 2021, according to the study authors. The rapidly developed COVID vaccines clearly saved lives, however: life expectancy declines were negatively correlated with vaccination rates. And the benefits were most pronounced among the oldest age groups. The pattern of excess mortality—a measure of how many more people die in a year than average—shifted to younger age groups in 2021, compared with 2020.
“The shift toward higher mortality in younger ages in 2021 reflects both the successful vaccination of the majority of older adults who were most at risk of dying from COVID-19 and the relatively low uptake of vaccination in younger adults,” says Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral scholar in gerontology at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the new study.
“There is a confluence of factors contributing to greater and more persistent losses in the U.S., including a less robust national response to the pandemic in 2020, lower adherence to social distancing guidelines, a higher prevalence of underlying conditions and lower vaccination,” Andrasfay says. “The U.S. stood out in terms of having more deaths from causes other than COVID-19, indicating that the U.S. did a worse job containing the impacts of the pandemic on the broader health care system.”
COVID cut average life spans short in many high-income countries, but the U.S. decline has been steeper and longer than most
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