The COVID pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in deaths around the world, leading to falls in life expectancy.
Life expectancy is a measure we use to summarise the mortality pattern of a country in a given year. It's calculated based on deaths from all causes, so it doesn't depend on the accuracy of recording COVID deaths, and can give us a broader picture of how the pandemic affected mortality.
So it's a snapshot of current mortality conditions, if they were to continue without any improvements or deterioration.
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