Although older Americans experienced the highest number of deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, younger Americans had the highest rates compared to the overall population — especially among people of color, according to a new study. study.
And in two groups – Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders and Native American or Alaska Native – working-age people (25 to 64) experienced the largest increases in mortality of any age group.
It is “really devastating because these are individuals who could contribute to our society and, more importantly, to their families,” said Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, a physician in the first line. and one of the co-authors of the study.
“The disparities are happening in this working-age population, where the effects last so much longer — that was the shocking thing to me,” said Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. and lead author of the study.
The researchers calculated excess deaths – the number of people who died compared to the normal rate – and found that almost 1.4 million more people died than expected between March 2020 and May 2023.
Working-age Americans saw a 20% increase in death rates during the pandemic, while the death rate among older Americans rose 13%.
But among younger populations, the effects were very uneven.
Black children and young people under the age of 25 accounted for more than half of the deaths (51%) in that age group, despite representing only 13.8% of the population.
“That’s a staggering fact,” says Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in this study.
“The U.S. has long been an exceptionally unequal country,” she said, and the pandemic “was experienced in very unequal ways.”
Indigenous populations, including Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, also had more deaths under the age of 25 than before the pandemic — but there were no excess deaths among Asian and white populations in the same age group.
Compared to the average working-age American before the pandemic, Native Americans or Alaska Natives of the same age were 45% more likely to die during the pandemic, while that rate was 40% for Hispanic people and 39% for Native Hawaiians or other people . Islanders in the Pacific Ocean.
The relative increase in mortality among working-age people is highest because younger people tend not to die, Wrigley-Field points out. “It is often the case that you see the largest proportional changes in younger age groups, precisely because mortality is smaller there.”
At the same time, she said the idea that “pandemic mortality is just a story about older people — that stereotype was really wrong and has misled us about the extent to which this was a disaster that very broadly led to deaths across the population.” .
after newsletter promotion
The U.S. was deeply unequal before the pandemic, but inequality has widened, experts say.
“There are very big disparities in who has access to treatment — who has access to a primary care doctor, who has access to insurance,” Essien said.
Then, during the pandemic, there was inequality among frontline workers who had to work in person, often without protection; who had to take public transport; and who had intergenerational households. There were also disparities in access to life-saving vaccines once they arrived.
“This pandemic has shone a light on the inequalities that are structural and not due to genetics, bad behavior or bad decisions,” Essien said.
The disparities exacerbated by the pandemic must be addressed now — and not during the next crisis, Essien said.
“How do we care for our communities and societies today so that those who are still alive can stay healthy, especially those from underrepresented and minority groups?” Essien said.
“What can we do today – in our healthcare systems, public health departments, federal government, state governments – to really ensure that people are living the healthiest lives possible so that they are not exposed to such a high risk if a new pandemic?”