The first two years of the covid-19 pandemic cost about 337 million years of life, by causing the premature death of millions of people, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted this Friday. In 2020 and 2021 alone, the covid caused the loss of 336.8 million years of life worldwide, according to this Geneva-based United Nations agency.
“It’s like losing 22 years of life for every one more death,” Samira Asma, WHO’s deputy head of data and analysis, told reporters. The calculation is based on data available in 2022.
Since then, the death toll from covid has continued to rise, albeit at a slower rate. The WHO therefore decided to recently lift its maximum level of health alert, although he warned that the disease has not disappeared after more than three years of pandemic. The official balance of deaths attributed to the disease is currently 6.9 million people.
But many countries did not provide reliable data to the WHOwhich estimates that the pandemic actually caused almost triple the number of victims in these three years, that is, at least 20 million dead. To do this, it is based on the calculation of excess mortality, defined as the difference between the real number of deaths and the estimated number of deaths in normal times.
The 20 million victims mentioned by the WHO include direct deaths from coronavirus and also deaths due to the impact of the pandemic on health systems.
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