‘COVID-19 pandemic has robbed Americans of 9 million birthdays,’ researcher says

The coronavirus pandemic has cut U.S. life expectancy by more than 9 million years from March 2020 to March of this year, according to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine published on Monday, which doesn’t take into account the latest wave of cases from the delta variant. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has robbed Americans of 9 million birthdays that would otherwise have been celebrated,” Hanke Heun-Johnson, one of the authors of the study, told Axios.

Per capita, Black and Hispanic Americans lost almost twice as many years of life as white Americans.

Men aged 25 to 64 saw a life expectancy loss of 720,000 years lost among Black men, 1.1 million lost among white men and 1.3 million years lost among Hispanic men.

Some 389,000 years were lost among Black women, 431,000 years were lost among white women and 710,000 years were lost among Hispanic women. 

A person who died from the coronavirus lost an average of 12 years off their life, with 38 percent of fatalities likely to have otherwise had a normal or above average life expectancy. 

“Our results demonstrate that COVID-19 has not been a pandemic just for the old and the vulnerable, but also for younger and healthier groups,” Heun-Johnson said. 

Out of the 9 million years lost from the pandemic, 4.7 million were from those ages 25 to 64.

There have been more than 42 million COVID-19 cases throughout the pandemic in the U.S. and more than 676,000 deaths.