Coronavirus Cuts More Than Ten Years Of Life On Average, Scottish Study Reveals

GLASGOW,SCOTLAND (VINnews) — A new study by researchers from the Public Health Scotland and experts from the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh has revealed that coronavirus is killing people more than ten years of their lives before they would have died of natural causes. On average, men lose 13 years, while women lose about 11 years of their life expectancy. The new study refutes the claims made by many people that coronavirus patients have underlying conditions which would have killed them anyway soon after contracting the virus.

The Scottish study claims that even among the elderly, many could have lived more years of their lives had they not caught the virus, and even those people with long-term diseases or morbidities are losing some years of their lives.

Dr. David McAllister, the lead researcher in the Glasgow study, says that even taking into account the number and type of long-term conditions of coronavirus patients will only modestly reduce the estimated years of life lost due to COVID-19.

Using data from Italy and a World Health Organization sliding scale which estimates how many years people would live, the researchers estimated that even taking other health problems into account, men lost an average of 13 years and women 11 years to COVID-19.

In other research published in the “Economist” Magazine based on information from Italy and Britain, it was claimed that people aged 90 lost an average of a year, 80-89 five years on average, 70-79 12 years on average, 60-69 lost 21 years on average and 50-59 lost 30 years on average

According to the years-lost scale of the World Health Organization, a person aged 81 who died of COVID-19 lost 14 years of his life, while those who died in their fifties without any underlying conditions lost around 35.81 years.

Significantly however, the number of years lost barely dropped for people in their fifties with one underlying condition (35.03). The figure was 29.67 for people in their fifties with two conditions – and 19.39 for those with five.

The wide variability in the impact of the virus on the life of the patients was due to the differences in the types of illnesses they had, said Dr. McAllister.

The Daily Mail reports that the study used in the research mainly focused on cases with diabetes, heart disease, irregular heartbeat, heart failure, stroke, high blood pressure, COPD, dementia, cancer, liver failure, and kidney disease.

Despite the patients having serious illnesses, the researchers found that those who died of COVID-19 could also have lived a substantial amount of time longer. Most of them would have lived much more than  the 1-2 years estimated by some commentators.

The Scottish researchers found that among Italian patients, high blood pressure was the most common illness among people who died of COVID-19, with 73% of all fatalities involving people with high blood pressure. It is followed by diabetes with 33%, heart disease with 27.8%, and irregular heartbeat with 23.7%.

The researchers published their non-peer reviewed research on Wellcome Open Research.