Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped a year in the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics said in a report Thursday.
The life expectancy fell to 77.8 years, according to the CDC data, CNN reported.
Non-Hispanic Blacks’ life expectancy fell by 2.7 years — nearly three times the rate it did for non-Hispanic whites — and by 1.9 years for Hispanics, the data showed.
Drops in life expectancy have been rare in the past four decades. For example, life expectancy dropped a third of a year at the height of the opioid crisis between 2014 and 2017, and that drop is considered significant, CNN reported.
