Suspected Marburg cases in Germany were false alarms: Officials

Two people recently returned to Germany from Rwanda who feared they had contracted the deadly Marburg virus have tested negative, health officials in Hamburg said Thursday.

Doctors had placed the two in isolation Wednesday after one of them said she feared she had caught the Ebola-like disease, which has wrought havoc in several outbreaks in eastern Africa.

“The two people transported yesterday to Hamburg Central Station for examinations in a department specializing in highly contagious infectious diseases at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf tested negative for the Marburg virus,” the authorities said in a statement.

One of the two people was a medical student who had worked in a hospital in Rwanda where patients were being treated for Marburg, according to an earlier statement.

According to German media reports, she is a medical student in her 20s who reported flu-like symptoms and light nausea.

The two contacted doctors, were taken to hospital and kept in isolation while being tested.

The authorities in Rwanda said late Tuesday that the death toll from the outbreak there had risen to 11, with 29 confirmed cases since the outbreak started on September 27.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that most of those infected were health workers.

Marburg is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes Ebola, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.

© 2024 AFP