Life expectancy in the United States dropped an incredible year during the first half of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials reported.
Minorities had the biggest impact, with black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics, nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
“It’s a huge decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees CDC numbers. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”
Other health experts say it shows the profound impact of COVID-19, not only on deaths directly due to infection, but also due to heart disease, cancer and other conditions.
“What’s really striking about these numbers is that they only reflect the first half of the year … I would expect these numbers to only get worse,” said Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a researcher and dean for health equity at the University of California, San Francisco.
This is the first time the CDC has reported on life expectancy from early, partial records; more death certificates from the period may still come in. It is already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in American history, with deaths amounting to 3 million for the first time.
The life expectancy is how long a baby born today can expect on average. In the first half of last year, it was a total of 77.8 years for Americans, a year lower than 78.8 in 2019. For men it was 75.1 years and for women 80.5 years.
As a group, Latin Americans in the U.S. have had the longest life expectancy and still do. Black people now have white people a life expectancy of six years behind, and this is reversing a trend that has been bringing their numbers closer since 1993.
Between 2019 and the first half of 2020, life expectancy for black people decreased by 2.7 years to 72. It dropped 1.9 years for Hispanics, to 79.9 and 0.8 years for white people to 78. The preliminary report did not analyze trends for the Asians. or Native Americans.
“Black and Hispanic communities across the United States have borne the brunt of this pandemic,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
They are more likely to be in the forefront, low-wage jobs and living in crowded environments where it is easier to spread the virus, and ‘there are strong, existing health disparities in other conditions’ that increase their risk of died of COVID-19, she said.
More needs to be done to distribute vaccines fairly, to improve working conditions and better protect minorities from infection, and to involve them in economic relief, she said.
Dr. Otis Brawley, a cancer specialist and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, agrees.
‘The focus should actually be great on getting every American adequate care. And health care must be defined as prevention as well as treatment, ”he said.
Overall, the drop in life expectancy is more evidence of ‘our mismanagement of the pandemic’, Brawley said.
‘We have been devastated by the coronavirus more than any other country. We are 4% of the world’s population, more than 20% of the deaths in the world’s coronavirus, ”he said.
Insufficient use of masks, early dependence on drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, ‘which proved to be worthless’, and other mistakes meant many Americans died unnecessarily, Brawley said.
“In the future, we need to practice the basics,” such as hand washing, physical distancing and vaccination as quickly as possible to get prevention back on track, he said.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed on Twitter: @MMarchioneAP
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