Washington (AFP)
The life expectancy of Americans fell by a year and a half in 2020, the biggest drop since World War II, according to the main federal public health agency, which largely attributes the cause to the Covid pandemic. 19.
This worrying trend is sharply accentuated for black and Hispanic ethnic minorities, according to statistics released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
The life expectancy of Americans at birth has increased from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. This span of 77.3 years is the shortest since 2003.
For African Americans, life expectancy drops by 2.9 years, from 74.7 years in 2019 to 71.8 years in 2020. For Latinos, it drops by three years, from 81.8 years in 2019 to 78.8 years in 2020.
The greatest decline concerns men of Hispanic origin, who lose 3.7 years of life expectancy at birth, a situation 90% of which can be explained by the devastation of Covid-19.
Another important factor is the rise in drug overdose deaths, a crisis that existed before the onset of the coronavirus, but which has worsened: more than 93,000 people died from overdoses in the United States in 2020, a level never reached. linked to an increase in opioid use during the pandemic.
From 2014 to 2018, life expectancy in the United States fell as a result of overdoses with opiates, in particular synthetic opiates, such as fentanyl.
© 2021 AFP