COVID-19 Makes the Life Expectancy to Drop Dramatically in the USA

COVID-19 Makes the Life Expectancy to Drop Dramatically in the USA
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With a total death toll of over 407,000 souls that the ongoing pandemic has caused, things don’t look as they’ll get better anytime soon in the United States. Thousands of people die every day in the country because of COVID-19, and there’s also a huge number of hospitalizations.

LiveScience writes about the USA’s life expectancy that has dropped tremendously and reached a negative record for the last 40 years. You’ve already guessed the culprit: the COVID-19 pandemic.

77.48 years is the average life expectancy in the US for 2020

The researchers of the new study project that the average life expectancy in the US for 2020 will decrease by 1.13 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also showed that there were even larger declines in 2020 for Latino and Black communities that live in the US.

The same study projected that life expectancy in the case of Latino people would drop by 3.05 years, reaching 78.77 years. Black people are quite on the same boat, as their life expectancy was projected to drop by 2.1 years, to 72.78 years. When it comes to white people’s life expectancy, it was projected to decrease to 77.84 years, meaning by 0.68 years.

Theresa Andrasfay, co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, declared:

The COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate effect on the life expectancy of Black and Latino Americans likely has to do with their greater exposure through their workplace or extended family contacts, in addition to receiving poorer health care, leading to more infections and worse outcomes.

Oddly enough, even if COVID-19 vaccines are expected to reduce transmission of the new coronavirus in 2021 significantly, the researchers don’t expect life expectancy to come back to normal too soon.

The new study was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


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Anna is an avid blogger with an educational background in medicine and mental health. She is a generalist with many other interests including nutrition, women's health, astronomy and photography. In her free time from work and writing, Anna enjoys nature walks, reading, and listening to jazz and classical music.

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