Respiratory diseases are rampant
Wave of illness could cost up to 36 billion euros
December 30, 2023, 7:55 a.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
Body aches, coughs, fever – the Germans are overwhelmed by a wave of illness. The doctors are groaning and the economic damage is in the billions, as the Kiel Institute for the World Economy calculates.
According to calculations by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), the current wave of respiratory and influenza diseases could cause up to 36 billion euros in economic costs. “The loss of work due to illness alone could result in a loss in gross value creation of 32 to 36 billion euros for the German economy,” says the IfW calculation, which is available to the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”.
The basis for the assumption is the high level of sickness, the sharp increase in new respiratory infections since October and the current rapid increase in new influenza infections. The number of all new cases per week is currently up to 53 percent higher than in the comparable weeks of the last severe flu wave before Corona in the 2017/2018 season. According to the IfW, how high the costs actually are due to the loss of work will depend largely on the duration and severity of the flu epidemic.
Even before Christmas, the number of cases of respiratory and influenza illnesses was extremely high. According to the report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), there was talk of around 7.9 million acute respiratory diseases nationwide, regardless of doctor visits. After Corona in particular has dominated for a long time, the RKI recently announced the beginning of the RSV wave (RSV stands for respiratory syncytial virus infections). At the same time, flu detections also increased significantly.
The high number of infections in acute respiratory diseases is also pushing practices to their limits. “We are currently experiencing exactly what we warned about in the summer,” said the chairman of the General Practitioners Association, Markus Beier, to the Germany editorial network before Christmas. “The general practitioners’ practices are once again running on the edge – even though the flu season hasn’t even started yet.” In many places, patients are no longer able to get appointments, waiting times are getting longer and longer, and there is hardly any time left for the treatment itself.