Disabled and disability-free person-years of life lost per 1,000 population between ages 35 and 100 over the years 2020–2022. Error bars represent 95% uncertainty intervals obtained from Monte Carlo simulation. Credit: Ahmadi-Abhari S, et al., 2025, PLOS Medicine, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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 study published 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 brings 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 highlights the broader consequences of the pandemic, possibly arising from disruptions in health care.
“The substantial loss in years of life, particularly given more than half would have been lived without disability, underscores the critical need for a comprehensive pandemic preparedness program which could provide both immediate and long-term public health benefits.”
More information:
Sara Ahmadi-Abhari et al, 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 Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004541
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Study quantifies loss of disability-free years of life from COVID-19 pandemic (2025, March 11)
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