ArticleDeutsches Arzteblatt international2021
The COVID-19 Disease Burden in Germany in 2020—Years of Life Lost to Death and Disease Over the Course of the Pandemic.
Article in Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
62 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The burden of COVID-19 based on disability-adjusted life years: a systematic review of available evidence.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) based COVID-19 health impact assessment: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2023Pooled it
- Prospective postmortem evaluation of 735 consecutive SARS-CoV-2-associated death cases.Scientific reports · 2021Pooled it
- The economic burden of COVID-19 premature mortality in Kuwait.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Subacute Thyroiditis-Is it Really Linked to Viral Infection?The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2025Article
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- The impact of COVID-19: consequences of a 3-Year struggle in Iran.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
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- COVID-19 and mental distress among health professionals in eight European countries during the third wave: a cross-sectional survey.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Temporal and spatial changes in the provision of mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: a claims-based cohort study on patients with severe mental disorders.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Article
- Impact of COVID-19 Infections among Unvaccinated Patients with Congenital Heart Disease: Results of a Nationwide Analysis in the First Phase of the Pandemic.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Burden changes in notifiable infectious diseases in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic.PeerJ · 2024Article
- The mortality burden related to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 - years of life lost and excess mortality in 13 countries and sub-national regions in Southern and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Disability-adjusted life years due to COVID-19 in Sri Lanka: a retrospective cross-sectional study.BMJ public health · 2023Article
- The direct disease burden of COVID-19 in Belgium in 2020 and 2021.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Reflections from the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: lessons for global health.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- The burden of disease due to COVID-19 in Sweden 2020-2021: A disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) study.Scandinavian journal of public health · 2023Article
- The challenge of estimating the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 interventions - Toward an integrated economic and epidemiological approach.Economics and human biology · 2023Review
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe SARS-CoV-2 pandemic presented major challenges to the health sector in 2020. The burden of disease arising from COVID-19 can be expressed as the number of years of life lost to disease or death. For example, death at age 40 involves a loss of far more years of life than death at age 80.
methodsThe disability-adjusted life years (DALY) lost to COVID-19 were calculated as the sum of the years of life lost through death (YLL) and the number of years lived with disability (YLD), on the basis of laboratory-confirmed notifiable cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany in 2020 (documented as of 18 January 2021). The methodology was based on that used in the Global Burden of Disease Study. Pre-existing diseases do not enter into the determination of YLL; rather, the residual life expectancy that is applied in this calculation corresponds to a mean age-specific level of morbidity.
results305 641 years of life were lost to COVID-19 in Germany in 2020. The percentage of DALY lost by persons under 70 was 34.8% in men and 21.0% in women. 99.3% of the COVID-19 disease burden was accounted for by death (YLL). The daily average years of life lost due to death was lower for COVID-19 than for the major non-communicable diseases. Persons who died of COVID-19 lost a mean of 9.6 years of life; those who were under 70 when they died lost a mean of 25.2 years of life. Men lost more years of life than women (11.0 vs. 8.1 years).
conclusionThe effects of COVID-19 on public health can be expressed through the burden of disease indicators. This method yields additional information that should be put to use early in the course of future outbreaks.
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