According to the report, the Western Pacific was the least affected, with life expectancy falling by only 0.1 years.
Geneva:
Covid-19 cut global life expectancy by almost two years as it raged from 2019 to 2021, erasing a decade of progress, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has reversed the trend of steady increases in life expectancy at birth and healthy life expectancy at birth,” the UN health agency said.
Global life expectancy fell by 1.8 years to 71.4 years, the same level as in 2012, according to a WHO annual survey of world health statistics.
The amount of time the average person can expect to live in good health fell by 1.5 years to 61.9 years in 2021 – also 2012 levels, the study said.
The impact was even worse than the findings of a study published by the Lancet in January, which said average life expectancy fell by 1.6 years during the pandemic.
Researchers from that study said Covid-19 had a “profound effect” on life expectancy than any other event in the past half-century.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the figures highlight the importance of the global pandemic security agreement being negotiated in Geneva “to strengthen global health security, but to protect long-term healthcare investments and equity within and between countries to improve”.
The Lancet researchers estimate that Covid-19 caused an additional 15.9 million deaths in 2020-2021, either due to the virus or due to the pandemic-related disruption of healthcare systems.
However, the WHO study shows that life expectancy has not fallen in the same way around the world.
The Americas and Southeast Asia were the worst hit regions, where life expectancy fell by about three years, the report said.
The Western Pacific was the least affected, with life expectancy falling by just 0.1 years.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
