This week the National Statistics Institute (INE) shared the final figures for deaths by cause of death for the year 2021: 39,444 people died from identified covid-19, 34.6% less than in 2020. It also offered preliminary data for the first six months of 2022.
Research published in Nature Human Behaviour analyses changes in life expectancy since the advent of covid-19. Its findings show that some countries in western Europe, including Spain, regained some of their lost life expectancy, and others returned to 2019 levels. On the other hand, losses continued in Eastern Europe and the United States.
Studies have shown that the coronavirus has caused life expectancy to fall in many parts of the world in recent years, although differences between countries and regions are considerable. The latest WHO estimates are close to 15 million deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2021.