Predupredimo

Serbia is experiencing a massive number of deaths due to COVID-19. One way to express this mortality is by measuring the years of potential life lost to this disease. This paper looks at the cost of the pandemic in 2020 to premature deaths in Serbia. The final data on mortality in 2020 in Serbia provided by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia is used to measure this loss. Premature mortality is examined through geographical, age, and sex dimensions. In total, 64.620 years of potential life were lost directly by COVID-19, i.e., 1019.14 years of potential life per 100 000 people younger than 75. Men lost 2.5 as many potential years of life than women did. Moreover, the region of eastern and Southern Serbia fared much worse than any other region. There is no clear pattern regarding the rural/urban divide, as some of the hardest-hit municipalities were rural and urban. The analysis was expanded to include the estimate of the economic cost of premature mortality due to the COVID-19. In 2020 more than \0.34 billion was lost to premature deaths, and by the end of 2021, this number will likely be well over \1 billion when the pandemic ends. The direct cost of premature deaths on future birth rates will not be pronounced as very few women younger than 50 died to affect future birth rates significantly.

Premature mortality in Serbia is a problem that is often overlooked. The paper quantifies the premature mortality in Serbia, the total premature mortality, as well as the mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and PM2.5 air pollution. Detailed mortality (vital statistics based) data is combined with remote sensing data of PM2.5 estimate how affected are the municipalities of Serbia by air pollution. The results show that Serbia loses over half a million years of potential life per year. Premature mortality due to PM2.5 air pollution is most prominent in municipalities of Vojvodina (North Banat). Results indicate that the initial year of pandemic does not paint a full picture when it comes to premature mortality caused by COVID-19. The paper offers recommendations in the form of a needed paradigm shift when it comes to population policy (instead of a pronatalist one – to one that focuses on improvement of public health as a population policy), revision of strategic documents, focus on prevention and opening data as a cheap way to encourage research, inform and educate the public.