Marburg virus: What Canadians need to know after fear spreads in Germany – National

German emergency workers in full protective gear shut down two railway lines at Hamburg’s main 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 during a train journey from Frankfurt. according to local reports. The train was evacuated after health authorities suspected they had contracted the Marburg virus – a rare disease with a mortality rate of as much as 88 percent.

The suspicion arose because the student had recently arrived by plane from Rwanda, where he had been in contact with a patient who was later diagnosed with the virus. local media reported. The passengers later tested negative for the deadly and contagious virus.

But the emergency aid begs the question: what if it had been Marburg?

Rwanda is currently dealing with an outbreak that started on September 27. The death toll has risen to 11, with at least 36 confirmed cases, according to the Ministry of Health.

“The Marburg virus is a very serious infection. It is found in Africa and is very similar to the Ebola virus,” explains Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital.

“We know that there have been periodic outbreaks of Marburg virus in recent decades. Whenever there is an outbreak of this, it is taken extremely seriously as it can be potentially fatal in a short period of time.”

Although the situation in Hamburg was ultimately a false alarm, Bogoch said local and international health authorities remain vigilant as the outbreak in Rwanda progresses.

Here’s what you need to know about the virus.

Marburg is a virus from the same family as Ebola.

It causes hemorrhagic fever and has an average mortality rate of 50 percent. according to the World Health Organization (WHO)although in previous outbreaks the figures were as high as 88 percent.

Symptoms typically include sudden high fever and extreme headache, as well as vomiting and diarrhea, followed by uncontrolled bleeding.

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Marburg outbreak: 8 deaths in Rwanda due to viruses, health officials say

Like Ebola, the Marburg virus is believed to originate from fruit bats and spread between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as needles or contaminated sheets.

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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, the WHO said. Since then, there have been outbreaks and sporadic cases in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, the WHO said.

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The WHO says four high-risk contacts have been identified following a case of Marburg virus in Guinea

The virus spreads to humans through prolonged exposure to mines or caves where fruit bats live US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It can also spread between people, through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, or with surfaces or materials contaminated with those fluids, such as blood. It’s not in the air.

“It is a transmissible infection. So the longer it takes to implement infection prevention and control measures, the more people could become infected and the bigger the outbreak could become,” Bogoch said.

“And unfortunately, the more people (who) also have to deal with this disease.“

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for Marburg.

Early supportive care with rehydration and symptomatic treatment improves survival, the WHO said.

Although there is no approved vaccine, Rwandan health officials announced Thursday that they will begin clinical trials of experimental vaccines and treatments in the coming weeks.

“This is part of our efforts to help people recover quickly by using vaccines and medicines specifically developed to combat this outbreak, which is currently in the final stages of investigation,” the minister said. Public Health, Sabin Nsanzimana, to Reuters.

“We are working with the pharmaceutical companies that developed these, along with the World Health Organization, to accelerate the process through multilateral cooperation.”

The WHO said it was working with the government and had held a meeting of industry, academic and government partners to accelerate access to vaccines and treatment doses for trials.

Four candidate vaccines have been evaluated by the WHO for possible use in trials, but only one, made by the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute, has data from early human trials showing it is safe and leads to an immune response.

Further testing of the vaccines outside the outbreak setting is not possible due to the risks involved.

Several treatments could be tried, including Gilead Science’s remdesivir, an antiviral used during the pandemic to treat COVID-19 and originally developed to treat Ebola, which is related to Marburg.

“While there is no antiviral drug for Marburg or an approved vaccine, there are drug candidates and vaccine candidates that may be effective,” Bogoch said.

“Sometimes these would be used in an ethical way in these outbreaks to investigate and evaluate whether this could help suppress an outbreak and generate data to support future outbreaks.”

Outbreaks of the Marburg virus largely occur in Africa. There have been no cases in Canada, This was reported by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)..

“The risk to people in Canada and those traveling abroad is low at this time. The World Health Organization (WHO) has assessed the risk of the outbreak at a global level as low and the risk of international spread as high. As long as precautions are taken, travelers are at low risk of contracting Marburg Virus Disease (MVD), even if they travel in the areas where the outbreaks are occurring,” a PHAC spokesperson told Global News in an email on Thursday.

The virus is also one nationally notifiable disease in Canada since 2000. As a nationally notifiable disease, cases of Marburg virus disease are reported to PHAC through national surveillance systems.

PHAC said it is also working closely with its national and international partners, including WHO, to track any Marburg outbreaks.

The health agency said it is monitoring the situation in Rwanda and recently posted an outbreak monitoring notice found here.

“The information for Canadians will be continuously updated as we monitor the local response in Rwanda,” the spokesperson said.

Although the virus has not spread to Canada or the United States, Bogoch says it is still important to keep it under control because it is a highly contagious disease.

“We know, for example, that a related virus, the Ebola virus, caused a huge outbreak in West Africa in several countries in 2014. And it is very difficult to control it when the scale of the outbreak is so large,” he said.

“One of the big concerns is spreading not only across other parts of Rwanda, but also across borders, especially in areas where contact tracing and isolation and medical care may be a little more challenging.”

He emphasized that the best approach is an “all hands on deck” strategy to quickly contain the outbreak and prevent its spread, both within Rwanda and to neighboring countries.

– with files from Global News’ Katherine Ward and Reuters