Robert Koch-Institut
FSME: Risikogebiete in Deutschland (Stand: Januar 2022)
(TBE: Risk areas in Germany (current status: January 2022)
Epid. Bull. 2022; 9:3-21. doi: 10.25646/9750
Recently, the Robert Koch-Institut (RKI) has published the yearly report about TBE in Germany. In 2021, a total of 390 TBE cases were notified by the RKI (712 cases in 2020). In 52% of the cases, the patients had neurological manifestations like meningitis, encephalitis or myelitis. Three patients died; two individuals were over 80 years of age and one individual belonged to the age group 20–25 years and had underlying diseases.
For 338 cases, the place of infection was within Germany, in 12 cases, only regions outside of Germany have been indicated (six times Austria). Most cases occurred in Bavaria (154 cases, 45.3%), followed by Baden-Wuerttemberg (124 cases, 36.5%) and Saxony (24 cases, 7.1%). However, TBE cases were also reported from other federal states: Hesse, Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate. New risk areas have been defined for the first time in Brandenburg (three counties) and one risk area in North Rhine-Westphalia (city of Solingen). In general, there is an obvious trend of more TBE cases reported in northern, western and eastern Germany – outside of the “classical” TBE regions in southern Germany.
Ninety-nine percent of the patients were not vaccinated (or not fully vaccinated). The vaccination coverage of adults was lower compared to children. In federal states with a high risk of acquiring TBE, the vaccination rate was not much higher compared to federal states with a low number of reported TBE cases (e.g., Bavaria: only 22.3%).