A Franco-German demographic study on Covid-19 mortality in Europe shows that the eastern part of the European Union has suffered significantly more than the west.
Conducted by the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) and its German counterpart, the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), the study first identified the points of entry of the pandemic on the continent as being the hardest hit by excess mortality.
In the provinces of Bergamo, Cremona, and Piacenza in northern Italy, the loss of life expectancy was particularly dramatic, nearing four years, during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, according to a summary of the study released by INED on Tuesday.
Generally, areas in northern Italy, southern Switzerland, central Spain, and eastern Poland lost more than two and a half years of life expectancy during this initial wave.
However, in 2021, excess mortality shifted towards Eastern Europe. Regions where life expectancy losses exceeded two years were located in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, the study notes.
Only one region in Italy and one in Spain were part of this group, whereas these two countries were heavily affected in 2020, it adds.
Ultimately, among the 50 European regions most affected by excess mortality in 2020 and 2021, those located in Eastern Europe were overwhelmingly dominant, with 36 regions in Poland, six in Slovakia, two in the Czech Republic, one in Hungary, and two in Lithuania.
The mortality outcomes in Sweden, which adopted a different approach compared to other European countries by avoiding lockdowns, were comparable to those of its neighbours.
