René Wilke warns of serious outcomes and points to falling vaccination rates since the corona pandemic.
AI-generated summary
The flu season extends from the 40th calendar week to the 20th calendar week of the next year.
Before the start of the flu season, Brandenburg's Health Minister René Wilke (SPD) is calling on citizens to get vaccinated. “Influenza is not a harmless disease; it can cause serious illnesses. Older people in particular should be aware of this,” warned Wilke in a statement. “Get vaccinated now, protect your health and that of your family!”
Who should get vaccinated?
Risk groups in particular - including people over 60, chronically ill people and pregnant women from the second trimester onwards - should be vaccinated against influenza (flu), the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), pneumococci and corona.
That's how many flu cases there have been recently
In the 2025/26 flu season, 12,802 confirmed influenza infections were counted in Brandenburg, while there were 18,719 cases in the previous season. Flu season is the period from the 40th calendar week, which begins on Monday, to the 20th calendar week of the next year in May. The proportion of people who have been vaccinated has been declining since the corona pandemic: In the 2020/21 season, 65.1 percent of people over 60 were vaccinated against influenza, and in 2024/2025 it was 48.6 percent.
The German Nursing Council has called on the black-red coalition to revise the planned nursing care reforms due to higher hurdles in accessing care levels and the deletion of the relief amount for care level 1. The suspension of adherence to collective bargaining agreements and the limitation of wage financing for professional carers are particularly criticized.

The German Nursing Council is calling for a revision of the coalition's care reform plans, criticizing higher hurdles in accessing care levels and the removal of the relief amount for care level 1 as well as the suspension of adherence to collective agreements and limited financing of wage increases for nursing staff.
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In Bielefeld, students, clubs and citizens revived a resuscitation doll for seven days and seven nights without interruption - probably a new world record of 168 hours. The campaign took place as part of the nationwide resuscitation week in order to lower the inhibition threshold for amateur resuscitation. Official confirmation from the Record Institute for Germany is still pending.
In a letter to federal ministries, a group of experts warns of significant safety risks from dietary supplements containing herbal and other botanical ingredients and calls for stricter legal requirements and official testing.
44-year-old Jolyn Muijsers from Flensburg talks about her experiences with weight stigma as a mother and how she feels the pressure to live up to societal expectations of good parenting, based on interviews by scientist Judith Pape-Greif from the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.