In the first half of 2020, life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population was 77.8 years, declining by 1.0 year from 78.8 in 2019 (6). Life expectancy at birth for males was 75.1 years in the first half of 2020, representing a decline of 1.2 years from 76.3 years in 2019. For females, life expectancy declined to 80.5 years, decreasing 0.9 year from 81.4 years in 2019 (Figure 1).
Author(s): Elizabeth Arias, Ph.D., Betzaida Tejada-Vera, M.S., and Farida Ahmad, M.P.H.
The decline in life expectancy was seen across racial and ethnic groups but was most severe in minorities, with Black Americans losing 2.7 years (from 74.7 to 72.0) and Hispanic Americans losing 1.9 years (from 81.8 to 79.9) during the same period. Meanwhile, white Americans lost less than a year (from 78.8 to 78.0), according to the report.
Hispanic Americans traditionally have the most longevity compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., and provisional estimates show they still do. Hispanics saw their “advantage” in this regard compared to Black Americans increase from 7.1 years in 2019 to 7.9. years in the first six months of 2020, the report said.
U.S. life expectancy declined by a year during the first half of 2020, according to federal figures released Thursday that show the deadly impact of the coronavirus pandemic’s early months.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics said life expectancy at birth was 77.8 years as of the end of June based on provisional estimates. The one-year decline from the previous year was the largest drop since World War II, when life expectancy fell 2.9 years between 1942 and 1943. It put life expectancy at its lowest level in the U.S. since 2006.
“It’s very concerning when we see mortality increase to such a degree,” said Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist at the center and a co-author of the report. “It gives you a clear picture of the magnitude of the effect of the Covid pandemic.”
All-cause mortality counts allow public health authorities to identify populations experiencing excess deaths from pandemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Further, delays in mortality reporting may contribute to misinformation because death counts take weeks to become accurate. We estimate the timeliness of all-cause mortality releases during the Covid-19 pandemic, and identify potential reasons for reporting delays, using 35 weeks of provisional mortality counts between April 3 and December 4, 2020 for 52 states/jurisdictions. On average, states’ mortality counts are delayed by 5.6 weeks (standard deviation 1.74), with a range of 8.8 weeks between the fastest state and the slowest state. States that hadn’t adopted the electronic death registration system were about 4 weeks slower, and 100 additional weekly deaths per million were associated with 0.4 weeks delays, but the residual standard deviation was 0.9 weeks, suggesting other sources of delay. Disaster planning should include improving the timeliness of mortality data.
More than 110,000 doses of COVID vaccine have been administered in the state’s long-term care facilities since late December, and state official estimate they are about two-thirds of the way to completing vaccinations of those residents.
Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week show that 110,016 vaccines have been administered through the long-term care facility partnership through which CVS and Walgreens pharmacists have vaccinated residents staff at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Connecticut.
The top federal COVID-19 tracking team says key pandemic intensity indicators improved last week.
The U.S. death rate increased slightly, but the number of new cases fell, and the percentage of people tested who actually had the virus that causes COVID-19 also fell, according to the White House COVID-19 Team Data Strategy and Execution Workgroup.
Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years, or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV.
The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists say.
“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”
White people received more than half of all vaccinations against COVID-19 during the first month of the rollout, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just over 5% of the nearly 13 million people who received the shot between Dec. 14 and Jan. 14 people vaccinated against the coronavirus in the U.S. so far have been Black, and just under 12% were Hispanic, the data shows.
Overall, excess mortality (in a relative sense) for Hispanics is about three times than that seen by non-Hispanic Whites, and non-Hispanic Blacks have excess mortality about twice that of non-Hispanic Whites.
Note that New York City by itself has a very large amount of excess mortality. You can see why New York, as an area, reacted very drastically last year. When I saw the mortality spike coming from the city last year, I was just fine staying at home… because I could. The trade-offs have been relatively easy for me to see.
The chaos of the vaccine rollout in the US has been well documented: states receiving half their expected doses; clinics canceling first shots because of unreliable supplies; people endlessly hitting “Refresh” on sign-up websites or lining up outside clinics without an appointment, hoping for a spare shot.
The CDC saw this coming.
“VAMS was intended to fill a need that states and jurisdictions were not equipped to do themselves,” says Noam Arzt, the president of HLN Consulting, which helps build health information systems.
Three states have emerged as national hotspots for the spread of the COVID-19 virus, according to new data.
When new COVID-19 incident rates per 100,000 people were compared nationally, Arizona, South Carolina, and California were revealed to be the states with the highest risk for the transmission of COVID-19.
The number of children’s visits to hospital emergency rooms for mental health treatment has increased by 24-31 percent since the start of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
