According to a study by Sara Ahmadi Abhari and her colleagues from Imperial College London in UK on March 11, the COVID-19 Pandemic will cause the loss of more than 16,000,000 years of adult life in Europe between 2020-2022.
It is important to understand the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 on total disability-free life years and their impact, for both policy and resource allocation. However, they are not thoroughly studied.
Researchers used a computer model to combine data collected from different sources about the European population over 35 years old between 2020 and 2022. The researchers tracked the rates of various diseases such as dementia and cardiovascular disease, and estimated the impact of the pandemic by using these data.
The pandemic likely would have caused many people to live longer than they did. This study quantified the ‘lost year’, and determined that 16.8 million life years (95% UI 12,0-21.8 millions) were lost in 2020-2022 due to pandemic.
Around 2.3 million life years were lost to the UK. A similar amount was lost in Germany. Even among those over 80, more than half the years lost could have been spent without disabilities and independent if the epidemic had not occurred. The pandemic had a direct impact on the mortality of 3.6 to 5.3 million people.
In most countries, the total number of years lost to COVID-19-related deaths declined after 2021 in parallel with vaccination. However, those due to non COVID-related deaths increased. Losses in years of life without disability varied greatly between countries. Countries with lower GNP suffered a larger loss.
The findings indicate that the pandemic exacerbated social-economic disparities between countries in terms of premature mortality and increased sex difference in life expectancy. The authors claim. The substantial number of years lost in life without disabilities reveals an underestimation by the general population, and especially the elderly.
The study’s lead author, Dr Sara Ahmadi Abhari, adds: Our findings demonstrate the long-term effects of this pandemic, beyond deaths from COVID-19. The vaccination was a key factor in limiting the direct loss from COVID. However, the steadily increasing death rate from other causes highlights the wider consequences of this pandemic. “The substantial losses in life years, especially when more than half of them would have been spent without disabilities, highlight the need for an effective pandemic preparation program that could benefit both public health immediately and over time.”
Journal Reference
- Ahmadi-Abhari S, Bandosz P, Shipley MJ, Lindbohm JV, Dehghan A, Elliott P, et al. 2025 Direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Life Expectancy and Person-Years of Life Lost with or without Disability: A systematic study for 18 European Countries, 2020-2022. PLoS Medicine 22(3): e1004541. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004541
