For the past two years, the corona pandemic has affected the world. Country after country has reported sky-high infection rates, full hospitals and dismal death records. Worldwide, a total of 248,770,199 people have been registered infected with the virus and over 5,000,000 have lost their lives.
Now researchers have conducted a new, comprehensive study of the extent of the pandemic – and the findings are disappointing, writes The Guardian.
Nakstad with thunder speech
28 million lost life years
In order to understand the full effect of the coronavirus, it is necessary to analyze the deaths – and not just count them, researchers believe. Therefore, an international team of experts, led by Nazrul Islam at the University of Oxford, has examined the number of deaths and the age of death occurring in a number of countries.
– The experts have compared life expectancy and lost life years in 2020 with historical trends in the years between 2005 and 2019 in 37 middle- and high-income countries, the newspaper writes.
The findings show that covid-19 has led to the loss of 28 million life years.
view more
–
The researchers make no secret of the fact that the numbers would probably have been even higher if the study had included countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which were excluded due to lack of data.
Islam nevertheless emphasizes that the entire research group is shocked by the gloomy result.
– At one point we had to stop and review everything again. Nothing has shocked me as much in my life as the pandemic has done, he says.
Hoarding message creates panic
Norway not on the list
In all the countries included in the study, life expectancy for both men and women increased between 2005 and 2019.
In 2020, there was a decline in life expectancy for men and women in all countries except Norway, New Zealand and Taiwan – where there was an increase in life expectancy, the research findings show.
In Denmark, Iceland and South Korea, there was no change in life expectancy.
The highest declines in life expectancy were in Russia, the United States and Bulgaria.
The number of lost life years was also higher than expected in most countries last year. The exceptions are Taiwan and New Zealand, where there was a reduction in the number of lost life years. In Norway, Isand, South Korea and Denmark, the researchers found no signs of change.
In the remaining 31 countries, over 222 million life years were lost during last year. That is 28.1 million more than expected, according to experts.
–
