Thankfully, the two passengers traveling from Rwanda to Hamburg, Germany, who were taken to the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, with suspected cases of Marburg virus, have tested negative. They had recently returned from Rwanda, which is currently experiencing an outbreak of the virus, for which there are no known treatments or vaccines and which has a fatality rate as high as 88%.
According to The Independent, several platforms at Hamburg Central Station halted operation earlier this week after one of the passengers—a medical student who had been working in a hospital in Rwanda—called doctors while traveling on a train from Frankfurt to Hamburg to express concern that they had possibly contracted a disease in Rwanda.
The Independent provides more details:
The health authority in Hamburg isolated both people at the main train station and transferred them to an area for highly contagious infectious diseases at the UKE for further examination.
Rwanda is currently experiencing an outbreak of Marburg virus with 36 cases, 25 people in isolation and 11 deaths confirmed as of Wednesday in the landlocked African country.
Hamburg's Social Affairs Authority confirmed that the pair had worked in a hospital in Rwanda as part of their medical studies and tested negative for Marburg virus in a PCR test.
According to the authority, at no time did either passenger have "complaints or symptoms corresponding to the disease" after one of the medical students, 26, had minimal contact with a patient infected with Marburg on 25 September.
Symptoms of the Marburg virus include fever, muscle pains, diarrhoea, vomiting and, in some cases, death through extreme blood loss.
The virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces.
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