Greece: reduced life expectancy in 2021 due to covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a prolonged two-year “shock” in life expectancy levels, leading to global changes in mortality unprecedented in the last 70 years, a new international scientific study by leading European demographers shows.

An analysis of data from 29 countries in Europe, the United States and Chile showed that life expectancy in 2021 remained lower than expected in almost all countries, compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, after a global decline in life expectancy in 2020, seven countries in Western Europe showed an increase in 2021, while in the rest of Europe (especially eastern Europe) and the United States, the downward trend in life expectancy continued into 2021. This, according to According to scientists, indicates that the population of some countries last year suffered from the pandemic more than others.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographics and the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Sciences at the University of Oxford, led by Dr. Jonas Shelley, made a corresponding publication in the journal Nature Human Behavior, analyzing mortality data for the period 2015-2021. The researchers spoke of a clear West-East geographic dividing line that became apparent in 2021 as most Western European countries saw a smaller or larger recovery in life expectancy after a significant decline in 2020. They even found that in four countries (France , Belgium , Switzerland, Sweden) life expectancy in 2021 has almost completely returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

According to Shelley, the four countries listed above “were able to restore life expectancy to pre-pandemic levels because they were able to protect both the elderly and the young.”

In a number of countries (including Greece), life expectancy showed a decline in 2021. Especially in Eastern Europe, the scale of loss of life expectancy due to the pandemic was comparable to the crisis of premature mortality that took place during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The country with the biggest blow to life expectancy is Bulgaria. According to the data, in general, the lives of citizens were reduced by almost 43 months during the two-year period of the pandemic 2020-2021. Also, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Chile showed a significantly greater loss in life expectancy in 2021 than in 2020, which, according to the researchers, is associated with an increase in mortality during pandemics. Life expectancy is an indicator of the general health of the population. Its changes at the height of the pandemic in 2021 likely reflect differences between developed countries, for example in relation to the percentage of those vaccinated or to non-pharmaceutical interventions.

An analysis of deaths by age group shows that deaths from Covid-19 in 2021 were proportionally higher among people under 60 than in 2020, when the elderly (especially those over 80) were most affected. The study also found that the country’s lower vaccination rate last year was associated with a reduction in life expectancy. The countries with the highest rates of fully vaccinated became the countries with the smallest decline in life expectancy.

The researchers noted that during previous global epidemics, the recovery in life expectancy was relatively fast. But in the case of Covid-19, this did not happen, which refutes claims that the coronavirus does not have a greater negative impact than the flu. Scientists note that the loss of life expectancy during previous influenza epidemics in the second half of the 20th century was much smaller in magnitude and on a smaller scale than during the current pandemic.

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