Danes lost 30.000 years of healthy life due to COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic

COVID-19 has had an enormous health impact on societies all over the world. In Denmark, a total of 30,000 healthy years of life were lost as a direct result of the disease according to calculations of the burden of disease from the DTU National Food Institute and the SSI. 

The study measured the direct burden of COVID-19 at the population level, taking into account the number of healthy years lost due to premature mortality and disability due to living with acute symptoms of the disease. 

“The estimated burden of disease would be even higher if we had included the long-term effects and indirect costs, such as postponed treatments or mental health problems caused by the lockdown. These figures were not available when the study was carried out,” says senior researcher Sara Monteiro Pires at the DTU National Food institute.

The researchers have used a protocol for calculating the disease burden of COVID-19, which was developed under the auspices of the European Burden of Disease Network . The DTU National Food Institute and the SSI are part of the network.

High mortality among the elderly but low among the young

To estimate the health impact of a disease, researchers used the metric ’disability adjusted life years’ (DALY), an overall measure of reduced quality of life and premature death. This metric makes it possible to compare how diseases affect populations in relation to e.g. geography, age and mortality.

One pattern that clearly stood out for COVID-19 was a high mortality rate in the 70+ age group and especially among men, while the consequences among the younger part of the population were very small. 447 deaths were registered among the 80-89-year-olds during the period and zero deaths among the 20-29-year-olds.