United States loses progress on life expectancy due to COVID pandemic

Dec. 22, 2022

The United States has lost 26 years worth of life expectancy progress due to the COVID pandemic, according to an article in Scientific American published on Oct. 17, 2022.

"U.S. life expectancy fell by a total of 2.7 years between 2019 and 2021 to 76.1 years—the lowest it has been since 1996, according to provisional data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)," the article stated.

“Basically, all the gains between 1996 and 2019 are as if they never happened,” Elizabeth Arias, director of the U.S. life table program at the NCHS and co-author of a report on the new data, was quoted as saying.