Hamburg station has virus scare
A station platform at Hamburg central station in the north of Germany has been cordoned off following fears that a train passenger may have arrived carrying a deadly virus. A spokesman for the fire department told the Bild newspaper that the man and his girlfriend had been developing flu-like symptoms on the high-speed train from Frankfurt.
They had come from abroad, according to the spokesman, where they were treating a man who went on to develop an infectious disease. No details have been given about the illness itself. It was not known what was wrong with the passengers but the man, reportedly a medical student, did not have a fever.
The website of Morgenpost in Hamburg said that the pair arrived in Frankfurt from Rwanda on the morning of Wednesday, 2nd October.
A team of firefighters and police officers arrived at the station and both the man and his girlfriend were taken to a specialist clinic. The platform in Hamburg was closed temporarily before being allowed to reopen.
Rwanda is currently fighting an outbreak of the Marburg virus which has already killed eight people so far. Marburg is not airborne but it can be transmitted by exposure to fruit bats and between people through bodily fluids such as unprotected sex or broken skin.
Its symptoms include fever, headaches, vomiting, and diarrhoea. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that the virus kills an average of half the people it infects. It was first identified in 1967 after lab workers were infected with a previously unknown infectious agent, first in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany and later in Siberia.
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