The world-wide excess mortality caused by COVID-19 is more clearly understood under the perspective of years of life expectancy lost. A recent study on high-income countries presented changes in life expectancy for 29 populations between 2019 and 2020, with extreme losses of -1.7 and -2.2 years for American females and males, to small increases of 0.1 and 0.2 years for the populations of Denmark and Norway, respectively. However, Australia with its strict COVID-19 policies of lockdowns and quarantines, was not included in the study. Now, with available official ABS information, we provide an update to the main findings of that study by presenting results for Australia compared to Denmark and the USA.

VladimirCanudas-Romo is a demographer interested in aspects of formal demography and the longevity revolution. He has made major contributions to the demographic debates on alternative measures of longevity and the development of decomposition methods to better understand these issues. He has received funding for his work from: i) the Australian Research Council, ii) The USA insurance company, AIG, and iii) the European Research Council. He has advised on mortality-forecasting methods the Social Security Administration in the USA, the Danish pension group, the World Bank and the Australian Government Actuary at Treasury. Vladimir’s international experience is extensive having worked both in Europe and the USA, before moving to the School of Demography at the Australian National University in 2017.

Brian Houle is an Associate Professor at the School of Demography. His research focuses on understanding how population dynamics and life course transitions shape disparities in health. In particular, he has focused on the dual burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases in Africa and identifying social and contextual determinants to improve child health.

Tim Adair is a demographer and Principal Research Fellow in the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. His primary interest is working with governments of low-to-middle income countries to strengthen their civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems and improve the quality of health data available to policymakers.