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Hanover / Berlin (dpa / lni) - In the corona pandemic, significantly fewer illnesses with other infectious diseases such as flu were reported in Lower Saxony.

This is based on data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Accordingly, significantly fewer influenza cases were registered this winter than in previous years.

There were four cases in the first calendar week of 2021 - in the previous week there were 112. Even if the number fluctuates from year to year - there has never been so few cases in the past few years.

In the last weeks of 2020 there were also significantly fewer registered influenza cases than in previous years.

The development can be seen nationwide.

According to the Influenza Working Group of the RKI, there are currently significantly fewer respiratory diseases than in previous years.

The number of norovirus diseases also decreased significantly in the corona crisis in Lower Saxony.

According to the RKI data, four cases were reported in the second calendar week of 2021 - in previous years there were significantly more than 200 this week. In the previous weeks, the statistics also show a drastic decrease in the number of reported cases compared to the same period in the previous year.

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Already after the first lockdown, the number of cases reported for many infectious diseases fell nationwide.

The reasons are therefore complex.

The Robert Koch Institute assumes that the Corona measures had an impact.

Accordingly, measures such as school and daycare closings, home office, distance rules, contact restrictions and hand hygiene in particular prevented the transmission of respiratory and gastrointestinal pathogens from person to person.

According to the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit, which is based on RKI figures, teething troubles also occurred significantly less frequently in Lower Saxony last year.

According to this, chickenpox was reduced by around half, and diseases caused by rota viruses by 83 percent.

The health insurance company also sees the government's corona measures as the main reasons for the decline.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210124-99-146991 / 2

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State Health Office on respiratory diseases

Working Group Influenza