Life expectancy in Britain falls to lowest point since 2010 after Covid wiped out a decade of progress
LIFE expectancy in Britain is at its lowest point since 2010, official data shows.
The average boy born from 2020 to 2022 will live to around 78.6 years old, down from 79.3 from 2017 to 2019, according to Office for National Statistics figures.
The figure dropped from 83 to 82.6 for girls over the same period.
Experts said life expectancy has not had the “bounce back that might have been expected” after the end of the Covid pandemic.
Veena Raleigh, of the King’s Fund, said it “points to deeper problems with the health of the nation and the resilience of the health care system”.
She said: “Today’s data from the ONS lays bare the impact that the pandemic has had on life expectancy in the UK — slashing life expectancy to the level of a decade ago.
“Much of the heavy burden of sickness and death in the UK is caused by preventable conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and diabetes.
“Worryingly, mortality rates from heart disease and diabetes have been rising during the pandemic.”
Life expectancy at birth has returned to the same level it was for females born between 2010 and 2012 and is now slightly below the 2010 to 2012 level for males, the ONS said.
Pamela Cobb, of the ONS, said: “After a decade of slowing life expectancy improvements, we’ve now seen life expectancy fall for both men and women.
“This decrease has been mainly driven by the Coronavirus pandemic, which led to increased mortality in 2020 and 2021.”
Separate data from the ONS show that while overall life expectancy have fallen, the number of people aged over 90 reached its highest ever level last year.
Some 550,835 people in England and Wales were in their tenth decade in 2022, while 15,120 were centenarians.
The number aged over 100 has more than doubled since 2002, the figures show.