Noro virus: 5000 patients in six weeks

(RP) country put more and more people with the tiny pathogens in the Norovirus. They suffer from severe diarrhea and vomiting. The disease is notifiable since 2001. But experts are certain that the real figure is extremely high. For old people the infection can be fatal.

When you look into his waiting room offers Dirk Mecking, a specialist in general medicine in Duisburg, every morning, a similar picture: At least four or five of the patients waiting there complain about the same symptoms: nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps and diarrhea. Headaches, fever and circulatory weakness come with some added. Who caught it very violently, which it no longer has to manage the practice, but he waits lying in bed at home on a visit to the doctor.

"A treatment does not exist."

„ "In the last two, three weeks patients regularly complain about such complaints," said Dirk Mecking, the chairman of the Association of North Rhine is a doctor. Most sufferers should "only" a relatively harmless gastro-intestinal flu torment. . If the symptoms but in particularly violent form, it is very likely that they deal with the dreaded, highly contagious Noro virus have infected. Especially for older people the disease can be fatal.

Since 2001, infection with the virus to the aggressive public health department reported. Nationally that figure is currently rising, according to the statistics of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from week to week. Four weeks ago were within just seven days nationwide 2752 Noro-reported illnesses, three weeks ago, there were 3372, two weeks before the 4118 cases. North Rhine-Westphalia alone in suffering in the last two weeks more than 600 people. Total infected in North Rhine-Westphalia from early October until the middle of this month about 5,000 patients with the virus.

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