The indirect consequences of the Covid-19 crisis could have a bigger impact on future life expectancy than the immediate consequences of the pandemic, research from the Pensions Institute has revealed.
The Impact of Covid-19 on Future Higher-Age Mortality paper, co-authored by the Pensions Instute, Cass Business School, Prudential Retirement, Heriot-Watt University and M Kessler Group highlighted evidence that many people in lockdown did not seek a timely medical assessment for a potential new illness such as cancer, or deferred seeking treatment for an existing serious illness, meaning the consequence that non-Covid-19-related mortality rates could increase in future.
The paper cited Cancer Research UK findings that referrals by doctors for urgent hospital appointments had fallen by 75 per cent ‒ equivalent to 2,300 cases per week. Another 400 cancers a week were being missed because 200,000 weekly screenings for breast, cervical, lung and bowel cancer was suspended during the lockdown. IT also references a study from University College London and the Health Data Research Hub for Cancer, which predicted that up to 18,000 more people could die from cancer over the next year in England because of the impact of Covid-19.
The Impact of Covid-19 on Future Higher-Age Mortality report found that other indirect consequences include self-isolation during lockdown leading to an increase in alcohol and drug consumption by some people, which might reduce their life expectancy. The researchers noted if there is long-term unemployment as a result of the pandemic, this could lead to so-called ‘deaths of despair’ in the future.
It also warned that the long-term impact of the economic downturn might reduce spending on medical and pharmaceutical research, causing a reduction in long-term future mortality improvements and may cause general medical advances to stall for a number of years as resources are redirected to finding a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19.
However, some people might permanently change their social behaviour, such as social distancing or wearing face masks in public, or seek treatments that delay the impact or onset of age-related diseases that affect their susceptibility to coronavirus, which could have the effect of increasing their life expectancy, the paper added.
The research also found some surviving coronavirus patients at all ages who needed intensive care could end up with a new impairment, such as kidney damage or reduced liver function, which will reduce their life expectancy. But for survivors as a whole, the paper conjectured that their life expectancy has increased relative their age cohort before the outbreak of the pandemic. However, the increase in life expectancy of survivors is likely to be very modest, around 0.2 per cent at age 65, it stated.
“It is too early to quantify these possibilities, although it is conceivable that these indirect consequences could have a bigger impact on future life expectancy than the immediate consequences of the pandemic,” ,” Prudential Retirement head of longevity risk transfer, Amy Kessler, said.
The research also examined how socio-economic differences impact Covid-19 mortality.
“We have also looked at variation in mortality by socio-economic group using data from England and Wales,” Pensions Institute director and Cass Business School professor, David Blake, said.
“Once we control for regional differences in mortality rates, Covid-19 deaths in both the most and least deprived groups are proportional to the all-cause mortality of these groups. However, the groups in between have lower Covid-19 deaths compared with their all-cause mortality.”
The reason for this is not clear, although it might be because they were better able to adapt to lockdown and maintain more effective social distancing than the other groups, Blake added.
“The key finding that Covid-19 seems to increase each cohort’s short-term mortality risk by a common multiplicative factor will help pension funds and insurers to properly assess liabilities now and in the future, Kessler stated.
“Assuming Covid-19 mortality in England and Wales between 75,000 and 85,000, we expect the impact on the mortality rates of the surviving population to be very modest,” Heriot-Watt University department of actuarial mathematics and statistics, professor, Andrew Cairns, concluded. “The impact on mortality rates post pandemic is not expected to be material unless deaths turn out to be a multiple of these levels.”
