Two people who recently returned to Germany from Rwanda and feared they had been infected with the deadly Marburg virus have tested negative, health authorities in Hamburg said on Thursday.

Doctors isolated the two on Wednesday after one of them said she feared she had been infected with the Ebola-like disease, which has caused several outbreaks in East Africa.

“The two people who were transported to Hamburg Central Station yesterday for examination in the department of the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf that specializes in highly contagious infectious diseases tested negative for the Marburg virus,” the authorities said in a statement.

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

According to German media reports, it is a 20-year-old medical student who reported flu-like symptoms and mild nausea.

The two contacted doctors, were taken to hospital and kept in isolation during testing.

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

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

Marburg belongs to the so-called filovirus family, which also includes Ebola, which has had devastating effects in several previous outbreaks in Africa.

© 2024 AFP