Two Frankfurt Airport workers have died of malaria after a rare outbreak led to six employees contracting the serious infection spread by mosquitoes, reports the BBC.
The mosquitoes apparently arrived at Germany’s busiest airport on a plane, triggering an outbreak which was first detected in July, said health officials.
Traps have been installed at the airport and mosquitoes captured will be analysed in a laboratory to determine their species and origin.
The BBC understands that six male staff in different jobs and different areas of the airport were infected, and officials are analysing blood samples to determine if they were infected by one mosquito or six different mosquitoes.
Last week, public health officials notified media that two of the affected individuals had died.
Laboratory tests to determine the source of the infections were not expected to be available for several weeks.
The Robert Koch Institute, a German federal government agency and research institute for disease control and public health, previously said the four employees fell ill between 4 and 6 July and the mosquitoes were brought in by plane.
The institute said malaria in Germany almost exclusively affects long-haul travellers who were infected in malaria-endemic areas, and that transmission within a German airport is rare. This form of the disease is known as odyssean malaria, or as airport, suitcase, minibus, or taxi-rank malaria.
The last case of airport malaria was in 2023, also at Frankfurt Airport.
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