Study quantifies loss of disability-free years of life from COVID-19 pandemic

Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, more than 16 million years of life were lost from 2020 through 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study published March 11^th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Sara Ahmadi-Abhari of Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues.

The direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on both total and disability-free years of life lost are important for policy setting and resource allocation, but they have not been thoroughly investigated.

In the new study, researchers integrated data from multiple sources on the European population aged 35 and older spanning 2020 through 2022 in a computational model. Rates of diseases, such as cardiovascular (heart) disease and dementia, disability and death were tracked and used to estimate the effect of the pandemic

Many people who died during the pandemic would likely have lived longer if the pandemic had not happened. The study quantified these ‘lost years’ and found that, in total, 16.8 million years of life (95% UI 12.0-21.8 million) were lost due to the pandemic in 2020-2022. About 2.3 million years of life were lost in the UK, a similar number in Germany, 3.2 million in Spain, 2.5 million in Poland, 1.8 million in Italy, and 1.1 million years of life were lost in France. More than half of the total years of life lost would have been lived without disability and independently if the pandemic had been avoided, even among people aged over 80. Of the total years of life lost, 3.6-5.3 million were due to non-COVID causes of death and related to the pandemic’s indirect impact on mortality. The total years of life lost due to COVID-19 deaths decreased after 2021 parallel to vaccination roll out, but those due to non-COVID deaths continued to increase in most countries. The lost years of disability-free life differed considerably between countries, with a greater loss per capita in countries with lower gross domestic product.

“The findings suggest that the pandemic worsened socioeconomic inequalities in premature mortality between countries and widened sex differences in life expectancy,” the authors say. “The substantial proportion of years of life lost without disability bring to light an instinctive underestimation of the pandemic’s impact, especially on the older population.”

Dr Sara Ahmadi-Abhari, lead author of the study adds, “Our findings illustrate the pandemic’s long-term impact, which extends beyond COVID-19 deaths. While vaccination played an important role to limit direct losses from COVID, the continuously rising loss of life from other causes highlight the broader consequences of the pandemic, possibly arising from disruptions in healthcare. The substantial loss in years of life, particularly given more than half would have been lived without disability, underscore the critical need for a comprehensive pandemic preparedness program which could provide both immediate and long-term public health benefits.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: https://plos.io/4gPuPlA

Citation: Ahmadi-Abhari S, Bandosz P, Shipley MJ, Lindbohm JV, Dehghan A, Elliott P, et al. (2025) Direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy and person-years of life lost with and without disability: A systematic analysis for 18 European countries, 2020–2022. PLoS Med 22(3): e1004541. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004541

Author countries: United Kingdom, Poland, Finland, United States

Funding: see manuscript