COVID outbreak has shortened US life expectancy by a year, reveals report

(Karachi) Life expectancy in the United States dropped by a full year during first half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a report published in Washington Post has revealed.

Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the finding by analyzing 99 percent of all US deaths, as well as provisional birth records, between January and June 2020.

The report stated that as a result of coronavirus outbreak, black men are experiencing a drop in life expectancy as compared to the years 1942 and 1943, when World War II was worsening.

Back then, the average American’s lifespan dropped by 2.9 years, the report highlighted. However, during the last 10 years, health officials were concerned over spike in fatal drug overdoses linked to opioid use. Those deaths typically claimed much younger people and eroded life expectancy multiple times between 2015 and 2017, alarming researchers at the time.

Researchers say that the recent data shows it is just the beginning of what could be a more dramatic trend. Data for the nation’s second and third virus surges, which infected and killed far more Americans than the first, are still being collected and analyzed.

They opined that the latest figures offer a staggering glimpse at the cost of the first surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report maintained that the one-year decline in the total population is quite large.

Evidence suggests that not all US COVID-19 deaths in 2020 were correctly tied to their cause. Health experts have said for months that the pandemic’s official death toll is an undercount. And a substantial portion of deaths in 2020 may also have been linked to people delaying medical treatment or forgoing care for non-coronavirus illness because they were afraid of becoming infected with the virus, the report added.