With COVID-19 raging in 2020, New Yorkers’ life expectancy was cut an average of four years: health officials

The arrival of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 slashed a stunning four years off the life span of the average New Yorker — with the city’s minority communities hit the hardest, city health officials said Friday.

The staggering figures were linked to the onset of COVID, with a 2020 mortality rate of 241 deaths per 100,000 New Yorkers — although the city’s overdose crisis also contributed to the rising toll from three years ago, according to NYC Health.

The coronavirus pandemic numbers surpassed the carnage of the 1918 influenza pandemic, where the mortality rate was 223 deaths per 100,000 city residents. Mayor Adams last month marked the third anniversary of the city’s first COVID death.

Overall, life expectancy dropped to age 78 years, a decrease of roughly 4½ years compared to 2019. The numbers among Black city residents were even starker, with the average life expectancy dropping to age 73 — down 5½ years from one year before, officials said.

The 2020 numbers also showed Hispanic/Latino New Yorkers saw their average life expectancy drop by six years to age 77.

“The years taken from people,” said Dotty Ogansanya, 27. “We should start to go back wearing masks until we know what’s going on. People got to boost their immune systems if we want to fix this.”

Anita Chernewski, an Upper West Side artist, was stunned by the new information.

“Wow!” she said. “Everyone who had it, the life expectancy is shorter. It’s crazy. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Most, if not all, of the mitigation mandates put into place in New York to control the spread of coronavirus have been removed, including indoor mask mandates, vaccine mandates to enter public spaces and restrictions on indoor dining and retail.

Erin Seglem, 30, said the numbers illustrate the need for proactive plans going forward.

“It’s such a systemic issue and I think COVID really demonstrated the system was already broken,” she said. “It was incredible to see the medical system buckle under itself.”

COVID was not the only factor. Drug-related deaths among Black New Yorkers jumped 42%, and city-wide overdose numbers were up more than 40% in 2020 compared to the year before, the health department said.

“The pain and trauma experienced by the city is still very real to so many of us,” said city Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan. “This report is an important record of what we’ve been through and all that we lost ... New Yorker’s life spans are falling, on top of years of relative flattening before COVID.”

The Health Department figures also revealed the group most affected by overdose deaths were city residents between the ages of 55 and 64, surpassing all other age groups.

“It is the great challenge of our time, our city and our department to lay out an agenda for the next era of public health, to reverse these trends,” said Vasan. “We are putting every ounce of ourselves into achieving that goal.”

Manhattanite Casey Nagy was still struggling with long-term COVID and returning Friday from a visit to her cardioligist. She’s too sick to even take her dog for a walk in the park, and offered her take on the first reports of dwindling New York lifetimes.

“It shortened mine,” she said, considering the grim numbers and her health problems.