2023-12-21 09:00:00
Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a reduction in life expectancy. The situation improved slightly in 2022 and 2023, but some countries, including Canada and the United States, are unable to regain the losses. And COVID-19 isn’t the only reason.
According to two studies, COVID-19 was the main factor in reducing expectancy in 2020 and 2021 in almost all countries. In fact, deaths caused by COVID-19 have caused the largest decline in life expectancy worldwide since World War II.
For Guogui Huang, a researcher at the Center for Health Systems and Security Research at Macquarie University in Australia, it is clear that the pandemic is largely responsible for the decline in life expectancy observed since 2020.
In most of the countries we studied, life expectancy had not changed much for many years. One of the only major things in terms of public health that changed in 2020-2021 was the COVID-19 pandemic, says this specialist.
While the impact has been felt globally, the effects of COVID-19 on life expectancy are not evenly distributed, says Guogui Huang, who analyzed data through 2023 (New window).
According to its analysis, in 2020, in 27 countries, life expectancy at the age of five decreased. The largest declines in 2020 were observed in the United States (-1.94 years), Lithuania (-1.83 years), Spain (-1.74 years) and Bulgaria (-1.68 years) .
In 2021, life expectancy increased in 15 European countries, but it continued to decline in the United States, Chile and Eastern Europe. This is consistent with the analysis made by Jose Manuel Aburto, (New window) demographer at the Leverhulme Center for Population Sciences and the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, as well as his co-authors.
Nadine Ouellette, professor in the Department of Demography at the University of Montreal, believes that countries which experienced an uptick starting in 2021 may simply have experienced a catch-up. [La pandémie a] precipitated the deaths of several elderly people [en 2020]who were no longer there to die the following year, so there is a certain link between the very marked trough in 2020 and the peak in 2021.
Since then, global life expectancy has continued to gradually increase, but 22 of the 27 countries analyzed by Mr. Guogui and his team have not returned to their pre-pandemic levels.
In 2023, in 19 countries, life expectancy at age five increased, including in the United States (+0.73 years), Bulgaria (+1.07 years) and Poland (+0 .74 years). The largest increase in 2023 among the 27 countries was seen in Chile, where life expectancy increased by 2.30 years.
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Nearly 58,000 Canadians have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Robert Jones
An improvement, but COVID-19 is still causing damage
For José Manuel Aburto, the fact that life expectancy is slow to increase is demonstration of the fact that COVID-19 is still very present and that its effects are still being felt.
We still have a lot to do before we get back to where we started.
These experts hope, however, that the decline caused by COVID-19 should be short-lived, but certain more vulnerable groups could continue to see their life expectancy decrease or stagnate for several more years, in part because of COVID-19, says Guogui Huang.
Moreover, according to Mr. Aburto, the pandemic has contributed to exacerbating inequities.
For example, one study shows that between February 2020 and May 2022, among Spanish-speaking Americans, the decline in life expectancy is equivalent to more than five years; among blacks, it is almost four years.
The pandemic has also widened the gap in life expectancy between men and women. Remember that more men die from COVID-19 than women.
Jose Manuel Aburto adds that their analysis shows that countries with higher vaccination rates have suffered lower losses in life expectancy.
A historic setback that will be difficult to catch up with
The pandemic has had immense repercussions on progress in life expectancy, laments Jose Manuel Aburto.
After all, life expectancy had increased significantly over the past century. First, the reduction in deaths among infants and young children at the start of the 21st century has had a major impact on life expectancy. The fight against infectious and parasitic diseases also contributed to this increase.
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Smoking cessation has had a major effect on increasing life expectancy.
Photo : iStock
In the 1960s and 1970s, anti-smoking campaigns, pharmacological advances in the treatment of high blood pressure and bypass surgery as well as the invention of the cardiac pacemaker (pacemaker) have all played an important role in reducing the number of deaths caused by cardiovascular disease. Then, the world made major advances in cancer screening and treatment.
Life expectancy has been increasing since 1921. There was a small hiatus in the 1960s. Researchers thought […] that we had reached the limit for human beings. And then, at the turn of the 1970s, there was a massive drop in mortality caused by cardiovascular disease. It happened in an impressive, synchronized way, and all over the world, says Nadine Ouellette.
On the other hand, experts have observed for around fifteen years that the number of deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases is no longer decreasing as quickly. There are almost no gains in the case of cardiovascular diseases, deplores Nadine Ouellette.
For these researchers, it is clear that it is increasingly difficult to increase life expectancy.
It takes time; we do not increase life expectancy by one year each year.
It is certain that life expectancy increases faster when we fight against infectious diseases and childhood illnesses, specifies Ms. Ouellette. Since the 1980s, in high-income countries, the vast majority of deaths have occurred at older ages. So, there is definitely less space for progressions.
Guogui Huang does not think we have reached the upper limit of life expectancy, but he believes that progress is likely to be much slower and cost much more.
The United States and Canada stand apart
If the pandemic has reduced life expectancy, Nadine Ouellette recalls that Canada and the United States were already experiencing a slowdown in the increase, or even a downright decline in life expectancy for several years.
After decades of progress, life expectancy at birth peaked in the United States in 2014, at 78.9 years. It then stagnated. The United States broke away [du peloton]and then there, they are light years away from the rest of the other high-income countries.
In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, it fell to 77 years, then to 76.4 years in 2021. This is the largest drop over two years since the 1920s. Remember that nearly 1.2 million Americans have died from COVID-19.
The decline in life expectancy of Americans is explained in particular by the lack of progress in cardiovascular diseases, by the high number of homicides and by maternal and infant mortality rates, among the highest in high-income countries. students.
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The opioid crisis is also hitting New York City hard.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Frédéric Arnould
However, a major reason is the opioid epidemic, say Guogui Huang and Nadine Ouellette. Every year, about 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses, mostly opioids.
According to Ms. Ouellette, this same slowing trend has been observed in Canada, and has been since 2010. It has been a while in Canada that we have felt that there is a slowdown in terms of life expectancy.
If COVID-19 killed 19,716 Canadians in 2022 and 14,466 in 2021, thus contributing to the decline in life expectancy, Nadine Ouellette affirms that, just like in the United States, the opioid crisis is hitting hard in Canada . It’s a shame, because we saw this crisis coming.
In 2022, life expectancy at birth decreased in Canada for a third consecutive year.
Life expectancy at birth for Canadians increased from 82 years in 2018 to 81.6 years in 2021, then to 81.3 years in 2022.
Quebec resisted this downward trend for several years, but the latest data shows that this province is also experiencing a reduction in life expectancy, largely due to opioids which are killing more and more young adults. .
In addition, underlines Ms. Ouellette, Canadian data shows more deaths caused by alcohol and cardiovascular diseases among young adults.
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Canadians are increasingly suffering from overweight and obesity.
Photo : iStock
Growing obesity certainly has a role to play in the increase in the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease, she says. On the other hand, she and other experts suspect that the damage caused by chronic opioid use could partly explain this trend.
There may be a connection with drugs that should not be ignored. These extremely powerful substances do a lot of damage to the body. Many people will not die from an overdose, but they may die very early from cardiovascular disease due to chronic use of these drugs.
Ms. Ouellette also fears that life expectancy will continue to decline in Canada and the United States if the opioid crisis is not contained. Things can get much worse if we don’t change anything.
She notes that recent Statistics Canada data on life expectancy are provisional; numerous investigations are still underway among certain coroners, particularly regarding several deaths linked to overdoses among young adults.
This means that what we are observing at the moment is a lower bound. So it won’t be less than that [le nombre de décès causés par une surdose d’opioïdes] : it might be more than that.
Ms. Ouellette adds that other countries must learn lessons from the opioid crisis in North America, otherwise they too risk seeing their life expectancy continue to decline.
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