Robert Koch Institute: Influenza came early and is over

Status: 01/26/2023 08:07 a.m

The flu wave started much earlier than usual this season and has already ended, according to the Robert Koch Institute. However, there can still be infections. Also keep the RSV wave on.

After an exceptionally early start in autumn 2022, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) now considers the flu epidemic in Germany to be over. According to the definition of the RKI’s influenza working group, it ended after eleven weeks with the first week of this year, as can be seen from their flu report.

However, that does not mean that there are no longer any infections: the season is still ongoing, only the phase of increased activity is over for the time being.

In the years before the pandemic, the flu epidemic usually only started after the turn of the year. The number of influenza infections nationwide in the laboratory and reported to the RKI this season is almost 260,000 so far.

That’s just a snippet of what’s going on. The severity of the wave is usually only assessed afterwards by the RKI.

According to the RKI, the RSV wave is still ongoing

Other respiratory illnesses are occurring at levels usual for the time of year, compared to years prior to the pandemic, according to the report. According to virological analyzes of samples from doctor’s offices, RSV, cold coronaviruses and rhinoviruses were the most common symptoms last week, the report says. The RSV wave continues.

The Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) had announced that the number of sick leave had risen to a record high last year due to the exceptionally strong increase in respiratory diseases among the 5.5 million insured persons of the TK. With an average of around 19 days of absence, every employee insured with TK has been on sick leave for longer than ever before.

For comparison: in 2021 the average value was 14.53 absent days. The previous maximum value since the beginning of the evaluation was 15.51 absent days in 2018. Similar developments in sick leave have already been reported by KKH and DAK.

source site