Runny nose, flu, corona?All data on the current infection situation
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Winter is dragging on in Germany and the flu epidemic continues. Which pathogens are circulating in mid-February? Is it still a cold – or is it influenza, RSV or even Corona? Current data shows how the seasonal infection situation is developing in Germany.
The infection process in Germany is under constant observation: In hundreds of doctors’ practices, laboratories and hospitals, specialists routinely look out for common seasonal symptoms. Since the start of the cold season, more and more patients have been presenting to their family doctors. What are people in Germany currently primarily suffering from?
The precise clarification of the symptoms and the appearance of typical symptoms lead to a closer examination in suspected cases. As soon as there is evidence of a reportable infection – for example with influenza pathogens or the coronavirus – a report is immediately sent to the health authorities. This data is collected and evaluated by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which relies on a variety of different sources to monitor the burden of disease in Germany. A look at the results provides experts with a good overview of ongoing developments.
Note: The infographics on infection rates in Germany are updated regularly.
The “activity of acute respiratory diseases” in mid-February “continues to be determined by the circulation of influenza viruses,” according to the RKI’s current situation assessment. “The flu epidemic continues, but the peak of the flu epidemic appears to have been passed.” Influenza infections continued to affect “all age groups” in the past sixth calendar week (week 07, February 9th to 15th). However, the number of doctor’s visits and the number of hospitalizations have remained “below the values from the previous season” in the last few weeks.
The RKI has recorded a slight decline in hospital admissions for patients with severe respiratory illnesses (SARI). The numbers therefore remain at a “moderate level”. The flu wave, which began in Germany this winter in the 48th calendar week “according to the RKI definition”, appears to have been weaker so far than in previous years.
A benchmark for assessing the current disease situation in Germany is the so-called ARE rate, which the RKI calculates using information from the Grippeweb project, among other things. The ARE rate indicates the extrapolated proportion of the population that was ill with an “acute respiratory illness” (ARE), i.e. a newly occurring infection of the respiratory tract, in the respective week. The advantage: The information comes directly from the population, so the data is created independently of any visit to the doctor.
However, the ARE rate only shows a rough estimate. A solid first impression of the overall situation can be derived from the movements compared to the previous week and against the background of developments in previous years. The reporting data that is recorded based on a laboratory-confirmed infection with reportable pathogens is much more precise. The number of reported cases is naturally lower than the number of people who are actually sick – simply because not all infections are recognized and detected.
This can be demonstrated using the example of corona infections: The reporting system only records those cases in which an infection is diagnosed by a doctor or proven by a laboratory test. In Germany, for example, testing is only mandatory in hospitals or in suspected cases.
Anyone who reports sick with an acute respiratory illness and stays at home is sometimes not included in the statistics as a corona case. The presumed number of unreported cases must be set correspondingly high.
The RKI knows the advantages and disadvantages of the different observation systems. “Not everyone who has symptoms of an acute respiratory infection goes to a doctor’s office and not every ARE patient is tested there,” it says.
“Doctors usually only take samples from the respiratory tract of some patients with acute respiratory diseases and have them tested in a laboratory.” The data from the reporting system is therefore only partially sufficient to estimate the actual burden of disease.
The reporting data at least provides an overview of the seasonal movements in infection rates. The start of the annual flu epidemic, for example, can be clearly seen in the reporting data. In summer, the number of detected influenza cases regularly decreases. In autumn – at the beginning of the cold season – the number of cases usually increases slowly.
In winter, the usual seasonal pathogens come to the fore. The first precursors of the upcoming flu wave could be seen early on in the fall of 2025. The number of reported cases of influenza virus infection has increased since mid-November. However, until mid-February, the extent of the flu wave, which this time started very early, remained significantly below the level of previous years.
“The influenza positive rate has increased significantly in the last two weeks,” warned the RKI at the beginning of December, with a view to the early phase at the end of November. Shortly afterwards, the criteria set for this were met: Influenza pathogens were found in more than a fifth of the patient samples analyzed in the laboratory sample from that week.
For comparison: In the previous 2024/25 season, the flu epidemic only started in the 51st calendar week and therefore shortly before the turn of the year. The peak was only reached at the beginning of February. After that, the number of detected influenza infections fell from week to week. It was not until well into spring 2025, after a total of 16 weeks, that the RKI was able to declare the influenza wave over at the beginning of April 2025. A total of 393,452 infections with influenza viruses were recorded. In the previous season, which was in the late phase of the coronavirus pandemic, there were only around 212,700 cases in total.
In this context, the RKI points out the importance of vaccination prevention. It was said at the beginning of winter that the flu vaccination rate in Germany had recently fallen to its lowest level in 17 years.
In the 2024/2025 season, the rate of standard vaccination against influenza in the age group over 60, for which a recommendation from the Standing Vaccination Commission applies, fell by 4 percentage points to just 34 percent compared to the previous season, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). There was only a temporary increase during the corona pandemic (2020/2021).
Vaccinations recommended for adults are generally underused, the experts warned. The RKI recommends that older or weakened people (risk groups) get the vaccinations. In Germany, a flu vaccination is recommended for people over 60, chronically ill or pregnant women, among others.
In addition to Corona and influenza, the RKI keeps an eye on other pathogens. Infections with respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), for example, pose a particular danger to infants and small children, but also to older or weakened people. RS viruses can trigger acute respiratory infections. Among infants, RSV infections are the most common cause of hospital admissions due to acute respiratory infections. Since July 2023, RSV infections have been among the diseases that must be reported nationwide.
However, the number of cases for RSV is significantly lower than for other infectious respiratory diseases. In the previous 2024/25 season, the RKI counted a total of almost 67,900 cases. However, since flu, RSV and corona waves overlap and the transmission routes are similar, special caution is required in certain areas such as hospitals, schools, daycare centers and after-school care facilities as well as old people’s and nursing homes.
Since June 2024, the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) has recommended preventive vaccination against RSV for all newborns and infants. Since then, the number of reported RSV cases in infants has “more than halved,” as the RKI states. In addition, experts refer to the well-known hygiene rules to protect against RSV infections.
After all, the basic precautionary measures also help against other contagious respiratory diseases such as pneumococcal infections. In contrast to Corona, influenza and RSV, these are bacteria that colonize the human nasopharynx – “mainly without causing symptoms,” as the RKI emphasizes.
However, in weakened, very young or older patients, these pathogens can cause diseases of the upper respiratory tract (sinusitis) through local spread or can also reach the lungs, where, in the worst case, pneumonia occurs. Here too, there are clear vaccination recommendations, especially for infants and people over 60.
In the case of whooping cough, the number of cases reached unusually high levels in 2024. For several months, more than 600 cases per week were registered in Germany. Whooping cough (pertussis) is also caused by bacteria. Unlike other respiratory infections, the spread is not linked to specific seasons. “Pertussis occurs all year round, no clear seasonality can be observed,” summarizes the RKI. Since 2013, whooping cough has been required to be reported nationwide.
After several years with comparatively low incidences of between one and four pertussis cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the pertussis incidence rose in 2024 to the highest levels since mandatory reporting was introduced. Here too, infants are most affected “in epidemic years”. Infected young children often require hospital treatment. However, experts warn that 60 percent of all pertussis cases now occur in adults. The reason is an “inadequate implementation of the recommended booster vaccinations,” according to the RKI.
The data shows: Overall, the infection process in Germany is far from being completely monitored, but it is monitored on a large scale and at several levels. The information available is sufficient to detect changes in the course of the disease and the beginning of new waves of infection.
In addition to the reported cases, the data from the flu web and the wastewater samples, around 700 so-called sentinel practices nationwide also contribute information on the number of patients and the accumulation of certain clinical pictures. The resulting consultation index provides additional information.
At the RKI’s National Reference Center for Influenza Viruses, nasal swabs sent in from all over Germany from patients with ARE symptoms are analyzed every week. The pathogens identified not only allow conclusions to be drawn about the extent of any waves of disease, but also provide reliable information about the spread of new types of viruses. Together with the hospitalization incidence from the hospitals and the data from the intensive care units, this results in a data collection that enables a comprehensive picture of the situation.
It is impossible to predict how long the waves of illness will last this winter. Compared to previous years, the “circulation of influenza viruses and RSV” appears to be “aligning with pre-pandemic patterns” again, it is said. But for the Sars-CoV-2 and Covid-19 coronaviruses, “there is still no discernible seasonality”. Since mid-October 2025, the infection process has also been “determined by rhinoviruses and Sars-CoV-2”. Around the turn of the year, corona infections faded into the background – at least in the laboratory sample, which is only based on a comparatively small number of submissions, Sars-CoV-2 only appeared sporadically.
In the swabs analyzed in the laboratory, coronaviruses were recently only identified “in isolated cases in the youngest age group (0 to 1 year) and in the oldest age group (from 60 years),” it says with a view to the results from the sixth calendar week. Rhinoviruses, on the other hand, have been “detected in almost all age groups.” The proportion of influenza cases among severe respiratory infections in the hospital already exceeded corona infections at the beginning of December.
Since the beginning of the flu wave, “mainly influenza A(H3N2) viruses” have been detected, and more rarely influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses. With regard to Corona, there are still no signs of a changed risk situation, for example due to new virus variants.
There are gaps in Germany’s infection defense elsewhere: According to the RKI, vaccination rates for children remain at a high level. However, the vaccination series are often completed too late or not at all. There are also deficiencies in protection against measles, “since a relevant proportion of children do not receive the second measles vaccination until their second birthday,” it is said. In 2024, more than a fifth of children missed their second vaccination by their second birthday.
