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A researcher at the Harvard Medical School converted the coronavirus death toll from an individual’s death to “person-years” lost in order to put forth a simplified picture of the pandemic’s toll on the population.
The author of the study, Stephen Elledge, has estimated that as of early October 2020, over 2.5 million person-years of life have been lost to the ongoing pandemic. This data stands only for the United States.
He noted in his study that the loss corresponds to an average loss of 13.25 person-years for each Covid-19-related death, with men losing an average of 13.93 years and women losing an average of 12.45 years.
Elledge wrote, “This astounding cost will probably surprise many people, given the apparent public view that Covid-19 mainly affects elderly individuals and is of less concern to other age groups.”
Also read: Researchers find what makes Covid-19 highly infectious
Contrary to the popular narrative of vulnerable groups amidst Covid-19, Elledge’s study showed that almost half of the potential years of life lost occurred among non-elderly populations.
The Covid-19 pandemic has meant the loss of millions of years of productive, active, and happy existence, said Elledge.
The author underlined that the loss of person-years is also associated with indirect costs due to the emotional and economic pressures on the families, friends, and colleagues of individuals lost to the disease.
A pre-print version of the study is available in the journal medRxiv.
Elledge believes that case fatality rates and total mortality are inadequate measures to display the true picture of the disease on a population.
Also read: Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy linked to concerns over origin of virus: Study
He explained: “Quantifying the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is critical for the public and policymakers to be properly informed as to the societal cost of the pandemic in order to rationally determine how best to minimise the social costs of the disease.”
“Converting the Covid-19 death toll from individual deaths to person-years lost, distributed across age categories, shines a light on the magnitude of the pandemic’s toll across the American population,” Elledge added.
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