COVID-19 pandemic caused significant loss of disability-free life in Europe

Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, more than 16 million years of life have been lost from 2020 to 2022 because of the COVID-19 Pandemie, published according to a new study on 11 March^one In the open access magazine Plos -medication By Sara Ahmadi-Arabi from Imperial College London, UK and colleagues.

The direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 Pandemia on both the total lost and disabled-free life years are important for policy institution and allocation of resources, but they have not been thoroughly investigated.

In the new study, researchers integrated data from several sources about the European population aged 35 and older in 2020 to 2022 in a computer model. Percentages of diseases, such as cardiovascular (heart) disease and dementia, disability and death were followed and used to estimate the effect of the pandemic

Many people who died during the pandemia would probably have lived longer if the pandemic had not happened. The study quantified these ‘lost years’ and discovered that a total of 16.8 million years of lifespan (95% onion 12.0-21.8 million) was lost by the pandemic in 2020-2022. About 2.3 million years of life were lost in the UK, a similar number in Germany, 3.2 million in Spain, 2.5 million in Poland, 1.8 million in Italy and 1.1 million years of life were lost in France. More than half of the total lost years of life would have been lived without disabilities and independently if the pandemic was avoided, even in people older than 80 years. Of the total lost years of life, 3.6-5.3 million were due to non-known causes of death and related to the indirect impact of the pandemic on mortality. The total lost years of life due to COVID-19 died in parallel in vaccination exhaust after 2021, but which continued to increase in most countries due to unknown deaths. The lost years of disabled lives differed considerably between countries, with a greater loss per head of the population in countries with a lower gross domestic product.

“The findings suggest that the Pandemie socio -economic inequalities in early mortality between countries and broadened sex differences in life expectancy,” say the authors. “The considerable part of the lost lifespan without disability brings an instinctive underestimation of the impact of the pandemic, especially on the older population.”

Our findings illustrate the long-term impact of the Pandemie, which goes beyond COVID-19 deaths. While vaccination played an important role in limiting direct losses of COVID, the continuously rising loss of life due to other causes emphasize the broader consequences of the pandemic, possibly arising from disruptions in health care. The substantial loss in life, in particular more than half, would have been lived without disabilities, underlines the critical need for an extensive pandemic readiness program that could offer both immediate and long -term benefits for public health. “

Dr. Sara Ahmadi-Abhari, main author of the study