Amid the pandemic, the life expectancy of American Indian or Alaska Native people is thought to have fallen by nearly five years from 2019 to 2021, the biggest decline of any ethnic group in the US

Health 30 June 2022

A Navajo Nation police officer smooths dirt over the grave of a person who died of covid-19 in Tuba City, Arizona

Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The life expectancy of American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) people is thought to have fallen by nearly five years between 2019 and 2021, the biggest decline of any ethnic group in the US during the covid-19 pandemic.

In 2021, Steve Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University and his colleagues calculated that the overall life expectancy of people in the US declined by 1.87 years between 2018 and 2020 – …