Nigeria: Fact Check - Is It True That Nigeria's Life Expectancy Is Responsible for Low Covid-19 Mortality?
Several social media users have claimed that Nigeria's low life expectancy has been responsible for the low COVID-19 mortality recorded in the country.
Data from the Coronavirus Resource Centre of John Hopkins University show that as at May 30, 2021, Nigeria had recorded 166,285 cases of COVID-19, out of which there have been 2,071 deaths.
The claim
Some social media users in Nigeria claim that the low COVID-19 deaths recorded in Nigeria have been due to the country's low life expectancy. This claim may have been accentuated by media coverage of fatalities from the disease that less deaths are recorded in Africa than projected.
The World Health Organisation defines life expectancy as the average number of years that a newborn could expect to live, if he or she were to pass through life exposed to the sex- and age-specific death rates prevailing at the time of his or her birth, for a specific year, in a given country, territory, or geographic area.
Responding to the tweet, a Twitter user, Olamide Eyinla, claimed via his handle, that is due to low reporting of cases and "low life expectancy, so a small group aged 60 years and above."
Similarly, a Facebook user, Jaafar Lawan, also claimed in a post on May 30, 2020, that low COVID-19 deaths in Nigeria and some African countries is largely due to low life expectancy.
"The ages below these averages of life expectancy have relatively good immune systems and low numbers of patients with co-morbidities such as diabetes mellitus, asthma and heart diseases compared with those over 70 years," he claimed.
Even the mainstream media in Nigeria spread this claim to justify low COVID-19 deaths in Nigeria.