Corona: roller coaster for sick leave
Florian Tiefenböck studied human medicine at the LMU Munich. In March 2014, he joined as a student and has supported the editorial team with medical articles ever since. After receiving his medical license and practical work in internal medicine at the University Hospital Augsburg, he has been a permanent member of the team since December 2019 and, among other things, ensures the medical quality of the tools.
More posts by Florian Tiefenböck All content is checked by medical journalists.Up and down: 2020 will be a memorable year for infection researchers. The pandemic and the measures to counter it are upsetting all experiences. In May there were as few sick notes as seldom in the northeast. Why?
At the end of May, the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) announced that as many employees reported sick in March as not in 20 years. Here the proportion of employees on sick leave was 6.84 percent. The highest level in the past year was according to the information at 5.30 percent. The main reasons given for the sick leave were colds. DAK-Gesundheit also registered significantly more sickness reports at the beginning of the corona pandemic (houseofgoldhealthproducts.de reported).
Fewer sick people through corona measures?
More recent analyzes - this time from the health insurance company AOK Nordost - now point to a roller coaster ride in the number of sick leave numbers. At AOK Nordost, too, they skyrocketed from mid-March to mid-April, well above the average. In May, however, they fell well below the usual averages. The coronavirus measures could not only have curbed the spread of the coronavirus, but also kept other infectious diseases such as the common cold or flu in check, the fund concludes.
At the beginning of the pandemic, many employees apparently adhered to the recommendation to stay at home if they had cold symptoms, the AOK Nordost analyzes. The fund also sees causes for fewer infections overall in alternation between home office and short-time work. Because of the daycare and school closings, fewer parents would probably have been infected through their children - and fewer children among each other.
Sick leave almost halved
According to their data, 40 percent fewer workers were on sick leave due to colds, gastrointestinal infections and acute pneumonia in May than in previous years. When diagnosing acute bronchitis, the minus was even around 50 percent.
For its analysis, the health insurance company compared its current figures on a weekly basis with the average of the previous year's periods from 2016 to 2019. The invoice is based on an evaluation of the anonymized data of insured persons who receive sick pay. According to its own information, AOK Nordost has a total of around 1.75 million insured persons in Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
An early end for the flu too
The course of this year's flu season shows that the corona measures could probably also have had an impact on other diseases. According to the Robert Koch Institute, it ended earlier than usual. The abrupt decrease in respiratory diseases from the tenth calendar week onwards was "extremely unusual", especially in adults over a longer period, according to the RKI bulletin in mid-April. (ft / dpa)
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