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A station platform has been cordoned off at Hamburg central station in northern Germany amid fears that a train passenger may have arrived carrying a dangerous virus.

A fire department spokesman told the Bild tabloid that the man and his girlfriend had developed flu-like symptoms on a high-speed train from Frankfurt.

The spokesman said they had come from abroad where they had been treating a man who went on to develop an infectious disease, without giving details of the illness.

It was unclear what was wrong with them but the man, who was reported to be a medical student, did not have a fever.

Hamburg's Morgenpost website said they had arrived in Frankfurt from Rwanda on Wednesday morning.

A team of police and firefighters went to the station and the man and his girlfriend were then taken to a specialist clinic. Platform four was closed for a period before it was allowed to reopen.

The East African country is currently battling an outbreak of the Marburg virus, Eight people are known to have died so far in the outbreak.

Marburg, which is not airborne, can be transmitted by exposure to fruit bats and between people via body fluids through unprotected sex and broken skin.

The virus produces fever, headaches, vomiting and diarrhoea.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), on average, the Marburg virus kills half of the people it infects.

It was first identified in 1967, when lab workers were infected with a previously unknown infectious agent first in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany, and then in Serbia.