Last year there were 7,600 Covid-19-related deaths in Switzerland
Keystone / Martial Trezzini
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused life expectancy in Switzerland to fall for the first time in decades. For males born in 2020 it decreased by 0.9 years to 81.0 years, and for females by 0.5 years to 85.1 years.
The last time such a decline occurred for men was in 1944 and for women in 1962, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) said on MondayExternal link.
Life expectancy has fallen particularly sharply for the elderly. Last year a 65-year-old man could expect to live for another 19.3 years (down from 20.0 years in 2019) and a 65-year-old woman could expect to live for another 22.2 years (down from 22.7 years).
Such a sharp decline has never been observed among men, the FSO said. For women, however, it had been seen in 1944, due to a particularly hard winter.
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A comparison of mortality in Switzerland during the pandemics of 1918 and 2020 reveals significant differences, the FSO said. The number of deaths attributed to the Spanish flu in 1918 was significantly higher than those attributed to Covid-19 in 2020. The Spanish flu caused almost 22,000 deaths in 1918, equivalent to 5.6 deaths per thousand people.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health, there were 7,600 Covid-19-related deaths in 2020, or 0.9 per thousand. The 1918 influenza killed mainly men and women aged 20-40, whereas Covid-19 was most deadly for those over 80. Between 1917 and 1918, life expectancy at birth fell by 10.1 years for men and 8.4 years for women, and thus much more dramatically than between 2019 and 2020.
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However, the pandemics of 1918 and 2020 also have some striking similarities.
Both killed more men than women in absolute and relative terms. In 1918 and 2020 the second wave of infections occurred in the same months of the year, with the peak of deaths in both pandemics occurring around November.
In addition, in both cases the cantons in western Switzerland had higher overall mortality rates than the cantons in eastern Switzerland.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.