Declines in life expectancy following the COVID-19 pandemic in provinces of Spain

  1. Sergi Trias-Llimós
  2. Amand Blanes
  3. Manuel Franco
  4. Usama Bilal
  5. Tim Riffe

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted population health on a global scale. Most of the studies on mortality impacts are at national level, while broad evidence exists on heterogeneous COVID-19 incidence across regions and within countries. Using Spanish data for 2020, we estimate life expectancy changes in 2020 compared with the 2017-19 period in 50 Spanish provinces. We visualize longer-term trends (1990-2020), and compare the robustness of our province-specific results with cumulative COVID-19 incidence using regional data from the Spanish ENECOVID seroprevalence study. In 2020 there was a 1.2 and 1.1 year drop in life expectancy for men and women in Spain, but this impact was heterogeneous across regions. For men these losses were highest in the province of Segovia (−3.5 years decline), while for women the highest drop was observed in Salamanca (−2.8 years decline). Life expectancy actually increased in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (+1.1 and +0.6 years for men and women, respectively). Declines in life expectancy in 2020 were also highly correlated with the cumulative seroprevalence through November 2020 (ρ=0.80 and 0.77 in men and women, respectively). Monitoring regional life expectancy dynamics provide valuable and granular information on the heterogeneous impacts of the pandemic on health at the population level. Similar exercises in other European countries may reveal insightful geographic patterns in mortality impacts in COVID-19 pandemic years.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.15.21255545: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    We should also acknowledge that, due to data limitations, the first age group used to estimate life tables was 0-4. In this case we assumed that the mean years of life lived by those dying in the interval (a0) was 0.5. This assumption implies a trivial effect on life expectancy estimates in low-mortality populations. Finally, we found a strong correlation with SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence as of November 2020, lending validity to our findings. This study reflects for the first time the extraordinary impacts that the COVID-19 has had on most of the Spanish provinces using conventional anual life expectancy estimates. The observed drops over 1 year of life expectancy between 2017-19 and 2020 in several regions as well as the national drops have not been experienced since the Civil War, in the late 1930s (7). In the first weeks of 2021, the third COVID-19 wave has also produced an observable excess mortality at the national level, but this impact differs from the one we reported here for 2020. For example, the provinces from the Valencian Community were highly affected, while its impact on 2020 was one of the smallest. This indicates that life expectancy for 2021 may not fully recover to the levels of previous years. Monitoring regional life expectancy dynamics provide valuable and granular information on the heterogeneous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health in different populations. Similar analyses in other countries may unreveal insightful geographical life expectancy dyna...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.15.21255545v1 on medRxiv