In New York, COVID-19 shaved years off life expectancy

The pandemic was the main cause of life expectancy in New York falling to 78 between 2019 and 2020, a drop of 4.6 years and the worst in decades, the city's health department says.

In addition to the virus, unintentional overdose deaths played a disproportionate role in the decline of life expectancy among New Yorkers, the department said on Friday. The number of drug deaths between 2019 and 2020 in the city rose by 42.2 percent, with the highest death rate among blacks.

For the last century or so the death rate in the city, measured as the number of deaths per 1,000 residents, was relatively flat or declining. But with the pandemic in 2020 the death rate in the city rose about 50 percent over the previous year, the health department said.

The New York Times quoted Ashwin Vasan, the city's health commissioner, as saying that the 4.6-year fall in life expectancy across the city was "a pretty dramatic decline in a short amount of time".

The 2020 rise in the death rate looks like something "from a different era", he said. "When you see this spike, there is a sense of 'Have we gone backward?'"

The coronavirus now does not represent the same deadly threat it did in 2020, but Vasan said he is worried that life expectancy will not return to pre-pandemic levels for years to come.

The pandemic has had a ripple effect as chronic diseases, from mental illness to diabetes, have gone unmanaged for many people, he said. Drug overdoses have increased.

Deadly health crisis

The health department's calculations show that COVID-19 killed 241.3 people in 100,000 New Yorkers, while the 1918 influenza pandemic, the most severe pandemic of the 20th century, killed 228.9 people in 100,000.

COVID-19 tended to kill the elderly, while the 1918 flu was unusually deadly for adults under 40.

Throughout the 19th century, the death rate was about 25 deaths in 1,000 people. In 2019 the city logged six deaths in 1,000 residents, and this rose to more than nine deaths in 1,000 residents in 2020, a rise of about 50 percent.

The pandemic's role in a lower life expectancy was not equitable in terms of race. For white New Yorkers, the average life expectancy fell by three years to 80.1, and for black New Yorkers, it fell by about five years, to 73 years. For Hispanics, the drop was six years, to 77.3 years. Asian New Yorkers were not included in the analysis because of data issues.

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