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Stuttgart (dpa) - Climate change and the consequences of the corona pandemic caused the number of TBE diseases in Baden-Württemberg to soar to a record high last year.
In 2020, a total of 350 cases of early summer meningoencephalitis from 38 out of 44 districts in Baden-Württemberg were submitted to the Baden-Württemberg State Health Office (lGA).
That is more than twice as many as in the previous year 2019 with 171 cases and the highest value since 2001, said the Ministry of Health on Wednesday.
With the exception of the Heilbronn district, the entire federal state is designated as a TBE risk area by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
According to the Stuttgart University of Hohenheim, the number of diseases also reached a maximum nationwide.
The disease is transmitted by tick bites and can include meningitis.
"On the one hand, we can make Corona jointly responsible as the cause of this dramatic trend," said Gerhard Dobler from the Institute for Microbiology of the Bundeswehr (Munich) of the dpa.
Because the numbers of TBE cases reported to the RKI also depend, among other things, on people's leisure time behavior.
People spend more time outdoors in their free time, so the risk increases.
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However, as a result of the climatic changes, certain types of ticks were looking for hosts that could bite them earlier, said Dobler.
The head of the department of virology and rickettsiology warned that this increases the risk for people of contracting pathogens that are transmitted by ticks earlier in the year.
According to the RKI, the annual number of TBE cases has fluctuated strongly since 2001.
Apart from a few districts, the disease is widespread in southern Germany as far as Hessen, Thuringia and Saxony.
There is a vaccination against this disease, but not against Lyme disease, which is widespread throughout Germany.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210303-99-668093 / 2
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