The first two years of its pandemic Covid-19 cost almost 337 million years of life, causing the premature death of millions of people, the World Health Organization announced today on the devastating impact of the health crisis caused by Covid-19.
In 2020 and 2021 alone, Covid caused the loss of 336,8 million years of life worldwide, according to the agency.
"It's like 22 years of life lost with every excess death," Samira Asma, WHO's deputy director for data and analysis, told reporters.
This calculation is based on data available in 2022.
Since then the death toll has continued to rise, albeit at a slower rate. The WHO lowered the health alert level it had declared, warning however that Covid has not disappeared.
The official death toll attributed to this disease, which is regularly updated by the WHO, was as of May 17 6,9 million people.
But numerous countries have not provided reliable data to the WHO, which estimates that the pandemic has killed almost three times as many people in three years - at least 20 million dead.
The agency bases this number on the excess mortality calculation, which is defined as the difference between the number of actual deaths and the estimated number of deaths that would have been recorded in the absence of the pandemic.
This 20 million includes deaths directly attributable to Covid, but also deaths linked to the pandemic's impact on health systems.
In today's report it is underlined that "significant inequalities are behind the distribution of cases and deaths of Covid-19, as well as access to vaccinations".
The WHO also warned that the pandemic has helped derail numerous health-related indicators that have been improving for years.
During the first two decades of the century, the world saw significant improvements in maternal and infant health, with deaths falling by a third and half respectively, according to the report. The incidence of infectious diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, has also fallen significantly, as has the risk of premature deaths from non-communicable diseases.
These factors have all contributed to the rise of global life expectancy from 67 years in 2000 to 73 years in 2019.
But after the outbreak of the pandemic, existing inequalities deepened, reversing the positive trend for malaria and tuberculosis, among others, notes the World Health Organization.
Source: RES-EAP