OECD report: COVID cut life expectancy in Estonia by 2.1 years

TALLINN – In 2021, compared with 2019, the year before the COVID pandemic, average life expectancy in Estonia declined by 2.1 years, a recent survey of European countries prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows.

The survey shows that, across Europe, the pandemic had reduced life expectancy by more than a year in 2021 compared to the year before the pandemic, Estonia's National Institute for Health Development said.

By the end of October 2022, more than 1.1 million deaths from COVID-19 had been reported in the EU-27.

The impact of COVID-19 on mortality has been lowest in the Nordic countries and highest in Central and Eastern European countries. While in Europe, on average, 2.6 people per 100,000 died from COVID-19 between March 2020 and October 2022, in Estonia, two people per 100,000 inhabitants died from COVID-19.

EU member states generally recognized the need to increase financial resources to respond to the pandemic. Despite the decrease in GDP, healthcare costs per inhabitant increased by an average of more than 5 percent across the EU in 2020, and by nearly or more than 10 percent in Estonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.