Health consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for the old age population in Sweden.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a traumatic experience for individuals and nations worldwide.

Not only has Covid-mortality reversed years of progress in life expectancy, but it has affected health and health care at large. Regardless of being infected with Covid-19 or not – life changed during the pandemic. Health care capacities were reduced, cancer screenings put on hold, and elective surgeries postponed.

This likely had negative effects on the health panorama of the old, with a disproportionally higher burden on specific subgroups, such as individuals living in care homes, lower socioeconomic groups, or individuals with a foreign background.

While thousands of research papers have come out about Covid-19, a comprehensive analysis of the broader perspective, the consequences for life years lost, incidence rates of major diseases, health care utilization, and of how this differs across population strata is still lacking.

This project aims to describe and compare population level and subgroup-specific trends of life years lost, disease incidence, and health care utilization during 2020 compared to expected levels in the absence of Covid-19; and will explore how potential differences unfold across population subgroups (living arrangement, socioeconomic status, birth country, age, and sex).

Finally, the long-term consequences of Covid-19 infections for the old are largely unknown.

Because case fatality for Covid-19 is highest in old age and among those with comorbidities, many of the deceased individuals may already have been on a trajectory towards their end of life, whereas others could have expected many more years.

By exploring the health trajectories among individuals infected by Covid-19 and investigating how they compare to those of matched individuals without infection, we will also gain more insights into the burden of Covid-19 on the individual level. The project will be based on a database created through linkage of several national registers.