Life expectancy in the United States fell a year surprisingly during the first half of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials have reported.
Minorities suffered the most impact, with black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and 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 from infection, but also on heart disease, cancer and other conditions.
“What’s really amazing about these figures is that they only reflect the first half of the year … I would expect these figures to only get worse,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a researcher in health equity and dean of the University. of California, San Francisco.
This is the first time the CDC has reported life expectancy from early partial records; even more death certificates from this period may arrive. It is already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths exceeding 3 million for the first time.
Life expectancy is the time a baby born today can expect to live, on average. In the first half of last year, it was 77.8 years for Americans in general, down from 78.8 years in 2019. For men it was 75.1 years and for women women, 80.5 years.
As a group, Hispanics in the U.S. have had more longevity and still have it. Blacks currently remain white for six years in life expectancy, reversing a trend that has been approaching their numbers since 1993.
Between 2019 and the first half of 2020, life expectancy decreased 2.7 years for blacks, to 72. It fell 1.9 years for Hispanics, to 79.9 and 0.8 years for blacks. to whites, up to 78. The preliminary report did not analyze trends in Asians or Native Americans.
“The black and Hispanic communities in the United States have suffered the brunt of this pandemic,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
They are more likely to be in the front line of work, with low wages and living in crowded environments where the virus is easier to spread, and “there are strong and pre-existing health disparities in other conditions” that increase the risk of dying. of COVID-19, she said.
More needs to be done to distribute vaccines equitably, improve working conditions and better protect minorities from infection and include them in economic relief measures, he said.
Dr. Otis Brawley, a cancer specialist and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, agreed.
“The focus really needs to be widespread to get proper care for every American. And we need to define health care as prevention as well as treatment,” he said.
Overall, the drop in life expectancy is further proof of the “pandemic mismanagement,” 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 world’s coronavirus deaths, ”he said.
Insufficient use of masks, early dependence on drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, “which turned out to be useless” and other missteps 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 soon as possible to regain prevention, he said.
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You can follow Marilynn Marchione on Twitter: @MMarchioneAP
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.