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Covid-19 increased fatalities by 16% in OECD countries and had a negative impact on mental health
Published on 5 Nov, 2021
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According to the OECD, the United States and Spain saw the greatest decreases in life expectancy during the first year and a half of the epidemic, each losing an average of 1.6 years of life expectancy per person.

On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that the Covid-19 epidemic had caused a 16 percent increase in predicted mortality among the 38 members of the organization.

According to the OECD, the United States and Spain saw the greatest decreases in life expectancy during the first year and a half of the epidemic, each losing an average of 1.6 years of life expectancy per person.

A 16 percent rise in the number of deaths projected in 2020 and the first half of 2021 across OECD countries was attributed to COVID 19, according to the group’s assessment.
According to John Hopkins University, the global death toll for Covid-19 has crossed the 5 million mark. In the United States alone, the virus has claimed the lives of more than 750,000 people. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been negatively impacted by this.
Only a few countries have seen their life expectancies rise, according to a new analysis on global longevity. Life expectancy at birth in 2019 exceeded 80 years in Japan, Switzerland, and Spain, according to an OECD analysis.

“A second group, including the United States and a number of central and eastern European countries, had a life expectancy between 77 and 80 years,” according to the World Health Organization. At fewer than 76 years old, Mexico and Latvia had the lowest life expectancy.” Life expectancy has been steadily increasing during the previous century, but the latest epidemic has had a significant impact.

In terms of vulnerable people, COVID 19 has been particularly devastating.” There have been more than 90% of COVID 19 deaths in people over the age of 60. People who are poorer, those who live in poverty, and most ethnic minorities and immigrants are more likely to become infected or die, according to a report.

There are quarterly reports from the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), a group of wealthy and middle-income countries, that seek to explain how health spending influences outcomes like cancer care and total life expectancy.

Covid-19 deaths in the US were found to be near to the OECD average in this year’s data.

According to the organisation, which focuses on countries including the United States as well as countries like India, Indonesia and Japan, there would be 1,824 Covid-19 deaths per 1 million population in 2020 and the first half of 2021. The incidence of Covid-19 in the United States was greater than the OECD average of 13,197 instances per 100,000 individuals. In addition, vaccination rates in the United States are approximately average, with 55% of the population completely vaccinated at the time of the report’s publication.

It has been estimated that the Covid-19 epidemic has reduced US life expectancy by more than a year.
The UK had 2,232 Covid-19 deaths per million people, 11,608 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, and a vaccination rate of 66 percent. In Japan, there were 117 Covid-19 deaths per million people, 1,347 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, and a vaccination rate of 61.2 percent. 699 Covid-19 deaths per million people, 4,347 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, and a vaccination rate of 71.2 percent were all recorded in Canada in 2013.

The pandemic was linked to a significant increase in some mental diseases, according to a new study.

According to the report, the pandemic has had a “The mental health impact of the pandemic has been huge, with prevalence of anxiety and depression more than double levels observed pre-crisis in most countries with available data, most notably in Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States,” impact on mental health, with the prevalence of anxiety and depression more than double pre-crisis levels in Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Many countries, including Belgium, France, Britain, and the United States, saw an increase of at least double or more in the prevalence of anxiety and depression in early 2020,” the report stated.

Anxiety and depression symptoms were more prevalent in France, the UK, and the US during times when COVID 19 infections and deaths were at their highest and containment measures were stepped up, according to reports from public health departments in France and the UK and the US National Center for Health Statistics.

During the coronavirus epidemic, US life expectancy was reduced by more than a year, according to study.
Doctors, nurses, long-term care workers, and other health care personnel in close proximity to patients have been particularly severely hit by the pandemic’s mental health effects, according to a report from the group.

The research states that healthcare personnel have reported significant rates of anxiety, sadness, burnout, and turnover since the epidemic began.

Health workers in the United States said that stress or worry over COVID 19 negatively affected their mental health, and close to half (49 percent) reported that the stress had damaged their physical health. “Mental health services were needed or received by nearly a third of respondents as a result of the pandemic,” according to the survey.

Nurses, on the other hand, may have been more impacted than doctors. The International Council of Nurses conducted a poll of 33 national nursing associations and found that three-fifths reported getting reports from nurses concerning mental health problems associated to the epidemic, according to the research.

Health care workers are more at risk for COVID 19 infection than any other sector of the profession, according to a European Union survey of the workforce.

Health care employees in Italy were surveyed in March 2020 and found to have signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sadness. As a result, “frontline workers had significantly higher odds of exhibiting post-traumatic stress syndrome than those who did not report working with COVID 19 patients,” the study concluded.

More than half (46 percent) of Spanish health care professionals experienced symptoms of anxiety and/or post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an April 2020 study of health care professionals. Nearly half of NHS (National Health Service) staff members in England (United Kingdom) reported feeling poorly owing to work-related stress over the preceding year, a 9 percent rise from 2019.”

According to the report, the epidemic led to an increase in health spending in several of the organization’s 38 member countries.

As a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, the OECD’s health spending has increased significantly.” Health spending to GDP (gross domestic product) ratios increased from 8.8% in 2019 to 9.7% in 2020, across the OECD nations with available data, due to lower economic activity.

If we don’t provide vaccines to underdeveloped countries, the global economy won’t recover.
Unprecedented increases were documented in the pandemic-affected countries.” The United Kingdom predicted a rise from 10.2 percent in 2019 to 12.8 percent in 2020, while Slovenia predicted a rise from 8.5 percent to more than 10 percent in health spending,” the survey stated.

For the OECD, the United States had the highest GDP-to-GDP ratio at 16.8% in 2019. However, a 2020 figure was not available. The COVID 19 pandemic is expected to lead to a 5.1 percent rise in global health spending in 2020, according to the analysis.

Moreover, the United States remains the largest health care spender in the world. There is no other country in the world that spends more per capita than the United States (nearly $11,000, adjusted for buying power, in 2019). Japan spends an average of $4,691 per person on health care, whereas the United Kingdom pays $4,500 per person on the same service.

Switzerland, Norway, and Germany also have some of the highest healthcare costs per capita in the world.

According to the survey, seven countries spend less per capita on health care but enjoy longer life expectancies than the rest of the world. In the report, it states that “These seven countries are Italy, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Greece and Israel,” United States, which spends more per capita than any other country in the OECD yet has lower life expectancy than the average, is the only country in this quadrant.”

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