2 airport workers die of malaria from mosquito on plane in Germany, 4 others sickened

Two workers at Germany’s Frankfurt airport who caught malaria from a mosquito thought to have arrived on a plane have died, the city’s health authority said this week.

Airport officials had earlier said one employee had perished, with six workers infected.

The Robert Koch Institute said an imported Anopheles mosquito carried over by an aircraft was the likely cause.

The other four infected employees were hospitalized and receiving treatment, said an airport spokesman.

Traps have been installed at the airport and mosquitoes captured will be analyzed in a laboratory to determine their species and origin, BBC News reported.

“We have provided comprehensive information to all employees and encourage them to consult a doctor if they experience any symptoms,” an airport spokesperson told the BBC.

According to the RKI, Germany’s last outbreak of airport-based malaria was in 2023. The rarity of the condition means diagnosis can be delayed, increasing the chances of severe symptoms.

The institute said malaria in Germany almost exclusively affects long-haul travelers who were infected in malaria-endemic areas, and that malaria transmitted within a German airport is rare, the BBC reported.

“For the population of Frankfurt, the risk is considered very, very low. The disease is not transmissible from person to person but is always transmitted by mosquitoes,” public health officials in Frankfurt said in a letter obtained by the BBC.

Officials said laboratory tests to determine the source of the infections were not expected to be available for several weeks.

The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, said it would analyze the malaria parasites in the patients’ blood samples.

Caused by parasites spread via Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria can cause symptoms including nausea, headache and intense waves of fever and chills.

The disease causes hundreds of thousands of deaths a year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Treatments exist and patients caught early with the disease usually make a complete recovery.