On March 13, 2020, one of the busiest streets in Palermo, Italy, was empty during the health emergency in a pandemic country caused by the spread of Covid-19.
Francesco Militello Mirto/NurPhoto via Getty Image
Official statistics on Monday showed that the coronavirus has reduced the average life expectancy in Italy by 1.2 years in 2020, and it has dropped by more than four years in parts of the country that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
In a new report released by the Istat National Bureau of Statistics, the life expectancy at birth last year was 82 years, compared with 83.2 years in 2019.
It said in a statement: “In 2020, the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting sharp rise in death rates suddenly interrupted the growth of life expectancy at birth, and this trend continued into 2019. “
In some areas, such as the northern provinces of Bergamo and Cremona (the epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020), the decline has been even greater.
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In these areas, men lost an average of 4.3 years and 4.5 years, while women lost an average of 3.2 years and 2.9 years.
More than 129,500 people in Italy have died from the coronavirus, most of them in the northern region, where 36% of Italians live.
Italy is the first European country to face the Covid-19 pandemic. For a time, the Lombardy region, the economic center of the country, became the center of the global pandemic.
Since then, the government has launched a vaccination program, which has fully vaccinated nearly 72% of the population over the age of 12 as of Monday evening.
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