Status: 10/25/2022 2:54 p.m
Compared to the beginning of September, the number of sick days at the beginning of October more than doubled. This is the result of figures from the Barmer health insurance company. The reason: respiratory diseases.
According to the Barmer health insurance company, sick leave for respiratory diseases such as corona and flu has more than doubled since the beginning of September. While at the beginning of September there were around 200 sick notes for every 10,000 employees, the figure in calendar week 40, i.e. from October 2nd to 8th, was 410.
Since the beginning of September, more and more insured people have been taking sick leave because of corona, flu, colds and other respiratory diseases. According to the evaluation, the reason for a good third of the insured was Corona.
In the first week of October, Barmer counted 130 cases per 10,000 employees – up to the 39th calendar week the number of cases was less than 100 per 10,000. According to the information, data from 3.8 million employees who are insured with the health insurance company were evaluated for the analysis.
High rate of sick leave in Thuringia
According to the analysis, there are large regional differences in the rate of respiratory sickness. In the 40th calendar week, Thuringia was the hardest hit with 493 per 10,000 people entitled to sick pay.
This was followed by Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt, each with 479 per 10,000 persons entitled to sick pay who were unable to work due to respiratory diseases.
The Hanseatic City of Hamburg was able to claim the lowest value with 326 per 10,000. In Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia, there were also comparatively low numbers of defaults in the period, at 368 and 361 per 10,000 respectively.
Sick leave from July to September
According to the figures from the DAK health insurance company, sick leave in the third quarter from July to September was “unusually” high for the time of year. The sick leave was 1.2 percentage points higher than in the same quarter of the previous year. However, the DAK analysis does not only include respiratory diseases. During this period, the 2.2 million working DAK insured persons missed an average of 4.3 days with sick leave. This was mainly due to musculoskeletal problems such as back pain, mental illness and respiratory diseases. Together they accounted for almost half of all absenteeism days.
According to the DAK, the level of respiratory diseases was also unusually high for the period from July to September. “Coughs, colds and bronchitis resulted in 34 percent more missed days than in the second quarter,” it said.
Young employees with the most sick leave
Almost a quarter of all DAK-insured persons had at least one sick note in the third quarter. However, among those in employment up to the age of 19, the rate of sick leave was almost a third. Only female workers between the ages of 20 and 24 were more frequently ill at 35.6 percent.
The DAK also makes regional differences in sick leave. According to the analysis, the sickness rate in the eastern federal states was higher than in the west. Arithmetically, 5.5 of 100 employees in the east were on sick leave every day, in the west 4.6.