SA women’s life expectancy likely to drop further in 2021 due to Covid-19: Study

SA women's life expectancy dropped by a year in 2020 and is likely to fall further in 2021 because of Covid-19.

This is according to a new article in the SA Medical Journal by experts from the University of Cape Town and the SA Medical Research Council (SAMRC) who examined the impact of the pandemic on mortality in 2020.  

The article also took into account the interventions to manage mortality in different countries.

The SAMRC's rapid mortality surveillance system, which is based on data from the national population register, provided a means of tracking Covid-19's impact on mortality.

Between 2019 and 2020, the article said, the number of deaths increased by nearly 53,000 with two-thirds of the increase among females.

Life expectancy at birth fell by one year for females and by 2½ months for males.

Life expectancy at age 60 decreased by 1.6 years for females and 1.2 years for males.

Infant mortality, under-5 mortality and mortality of children aged 5-14 decreased by 22%, 20% and 10%, respectively, while that for older children and adolescents decreased by 11% for males and 5% for females.

Premature adult mortality — the probability of a 15-year-old dying before age 60 — increased by 2% for males and 9% for females.

“During 2020, the rapid mortality surveillance system was modified to track the weekly number of deaths and thereby provide critical insight into the impact of Covid-19 in near to real time,” said the article.

“The two key features of the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic on life expectancy in SA in 2020 are the seemingly modest impact relative to countries with similar levels of infection and the fact that the impact on life expectancy of females was greater than that on life expectancy of males.

“For example, only seven countries — all with lower prevalences of SARS-CoV-2 — out of 29 experienced a lower change in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020, and only three showed a lower drop in male than female life expectancy. All of these were smaller than those found in SA.

“The major reasons for this relatively unique outcome are the early, strict and to some extent long-lasting lockdown, and the fact that the mortality in 2019 overestimates the expected non-Covid-19 mortality in 2020 in SA.”

Since the trend in the total number of deaths over time has been downward, mainly as a result of treatment of people with HIV, mortality in 2020 without Covid-19 can be expected to be lower than that in 2019.

“Deaths due to all causes combined in 2020 in excess of what might have been expected without the epidemic are therefore estimated to be nearly 74,000, of which 71% were female.

“However, the drop in life expectancy in 2021 can be expected to be somewhat greater than that in 2020 because of the devastating second and third waves of the Covid-19 pandemic associated with new variants of the virus, and the waning effectiveness of  interventions to control the spread of the virus.”

TimesLIVE