Doctors have placed two people recently returned from Rwanda in isolation and are testing to see if they have contracted the deadly Marburg virus, health officials in Hamburg said Thursday.
Doctors acted on Wednesday after one of the two said she feared she had caught the Ebola-like disease, which has wrought havoc in several outbreaks in east Africa.
"A rapid diagnosis is now essential. This is now in hand," said the statement from health officials in the northern city.
"One of the two people had worked in a hospital in Rwanda as part of her medical studies" where patients were being treated for Marburg, the statement said.
Having returned to Germany on Wednesday, they took a train from Frankfurt to Hamburg at which point one of them began to fear she had come down with the illness and contacted doctors.
According to German media reports, the patient is a medical student in her 20s who reported flu-like symptoms and light nausea.
A medical team met them at Hamburg rail station and took them to the Hamburg-Eppendorf university hospital for isolation and treatment.
Officials are now gathering contact details of passengers who travelled on the same train or plane as them, said the Hamburg authorities.
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 Centres 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.
Its mortality rate can run as high as 88 percent.
The virus is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
There are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments, but potential treatments and early candidate vaccines are being evaluated.