German emergency personnel in full protective gear shut down two railroad tracks at Hamburg’s central station on Wednesday after two passengers were suspected of having contracted the deadly Marburg virus.
A 26-year-old medical student and his girlfriend developed flu-like symptoms while on a train from Frankfurt, according to local reports. The train was evacuated after health authorities suspected they had contracted the Marburg virus — a rare disease that has a fatality rate as high as 88 per cent.
The suspicion arose because the student had recently arrived by plane from Rwanda, where he had been in contact with a patient later diagnosed with the virus, local media reported. The passengers later tested negative for the deadly and contagious virus.
But the emergency response raises the question: what if it had been Marburg?
Rwanda is currently grappling with an outbreak that began Sept. 27. According to the health ministry, the death toll has risen to 11, with at least 36 confirmed cases.
“Marburg virus is a very severe infection. It’s found in Africa and it’s very similar to the Ebola virus,” explained Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital.
“We know there’s been periodic outbreaks of Marburg virus for the last few decades. Whenever there’s an outbreak of this, it’s taken extremely seriously because it can be potentially fatal in a short period of time.”
While the situation in Hamburg was ultimately a false alarm, Bogoch said local and international health agencies are staying vigilant as the outbreak in Rwanda progresses.
Here’s what you need to know about the virus.
What is Marburg virus?
Marburg is a virus from the same family as Ebola.
It causes hemorrhagic fever and has an average fatality rate of 50 per cent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), although rates have been as high as 88 per cent in previous outbreaks.
Symptoms typically include a sudden high fever and extreme headache, as well as vomiting and diarrhea, followed by uncontrolled bleeding.
Like Ebola, the Marburg virus is believed to originate in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as needles or contaminated bed sheets.
The virus was first identified in Marburg, a city in Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia, in 1967, after laboratory work with African green monkeys from Uganda led to human infections, according to the WHO. Since then, there have been outbreaks and sporadic cases in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, the WHO said.
