Along with cancers and heart disease, the Covid-19 pandemic is responsible for half of American deaths in 2021.
Covid, cancer, heart disease, drug use and overdoses… For the second year in a row, Americans’ life expectancy has fallen and reached its lowest level since 1996, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and from the National Center for Preventive Health Statistics reported by CNN.
Life expectancy in the United States is on average two and a half years shorter in 2021, with Americans overall living to be 76.4 years old, according to the latest data.
“What we are seeing in terms of mortality patterns is largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Robert Anderson, head of mortality statistics at the National Center for Preventive Health Statistics, told US media.
Covid-19 is the cause of one death in eight in 2021, compared to one death in ten in 2020. The pandemic thus remains the third leading cause of death in the country, after heart disease, the leading factor in mortality, and cancer, second factor. Together, these three causes are responsible for half of the deaths in the United States in 2021.
“Covid-19 has exacerbated many factors”
Drug overdoses are also wreaking havoc in the country, and have increased significantly throughout the pandemic, reaching record highs in 2021. Nearly 107,000 people died of drug overdoses last year. Statistics deemed “tragic but not surprising” by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Use.
“The pandemic has had an amplifying effect on an already devastating overdose crisis in the United States. Covid-19 has exacerbated many stressors in society that make people more vulnerable to drug use,” explains- she told CNN.
This increase in mortality, partly amplified by the pandemic, is not irrevocable, however, believe the researchers. “This trend needs to be watched carefully in the years to come. But it is entirely possible that things will get back to normal, we could end up with life expectancy returning to what it was before Covid,” projects Robert Anderson. How long it will take for the effects of the pandemic to wear off remains to be seen.
