A recent report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that approximately 13 million individuals lost their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This devastating virus swiftly became the primary cause of death in the Americas, as stated in the study. In 2020, it ranked as the third-highest cause of mortality worldwide, but by 2021, it had risen to the second position.
COVID-19 was among the top five causes of death in all regions except Africa and the Western Pacific. The WHO report emphasized that the pandemic has set back global progress in life expectancy by almost a decade in just two years.
Between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy dropped by 1.8 years to 71.4, matching the level observed in 2012. Similarly, global healthy life expectancy regressed to the 2012 level of 61.9 years in 2021.
The report highlighted that the Americas and Southeast Asia experienced the most significant impact, with life expectancy in these regions decreasing by approximately 3 years and healthy life expectancy by 2.5 years between 2019 and 2021.
Conversely, the Western Pacific region was relatively less affected during the initial two years of the pandemic. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized the fragility of progress, stating that the COVID-19 pandemic erased a decade of gains in life expectancy within a mere two years. Initially emerging in late 2019, COVID-19 evolved into the largest epidemic witnessed in al
most a century. The medical journal Lancet previously suggested that the number of COVID-related deaths could be as high as 18 million.
The WHO report also noted that noncommunicable diseases, such as ischemic heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes, which were the leading causes of death before the pandemic, accounted for 78% of non-COVID deaths in 2020-2021.
