RKI: Significantly more severe respiratory diseases
According to a recent report by the Robert Koch Institute, the number of severe acute respiratory infections in Germany among people under the age of 60 has risen significantly in some cases. For young children and people aged 15 to 34 in particular, the experts report a sharp increase for the past week compared to the previous week.
However, the incidence among young children is still significantly lower than in the same period last year and is "at the level of the pre-pandemic seasons". The number of cases among people aged 60 and over has fallen. The data comes from random monitoring of severe acute respiratory infections at hospitals.
According to the data, children were most frequently diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections. A significant increase in RSV diagnoses in young children in recent weeks could therefore also be due to increased testing following the introduction of a nationwide RSV reporting requirement. The rate of RSV-positive samples in virological surveillance is still low.
Overall, the RKI estimates that there were around 7.2 million acute respiratory illnesses in the population in the previous week, regardless of whether the patient had seen a doctor or not. According to the report, there are as yet no indications of an incipient flu epidemic.
According to the RKI report, the number of laboratory-confirmed and reported corona infections last week was just over 22,000 (previous week: 21,800) and a total of almost 118,500 since the beginning of October. However, this is only a small part of what is actually happening. Compared to the same period last year, the number of severe respiratory illnesses caused by Sars-CoV-2 "remains proportionally lower", it said.
The rise in severe respiratory diseases as reported by RKI might be linked to the ongoing presence of other diseases like Corona and Covid-19, which are still a concern in Science. Despite this, Corona and Covid-19-related severe respiratory illnesses among the elderly have decreased, while those among children are lower than the previous year but have seen an increase recently.
Source: www.dpa.com
