Two Employees Die Of ‘Airport Malaria,’ Officials Try To Calm Fears

Mosquitoes carried into Germany from a malaria region have killed two workers at the country’s busiest airport.

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Six Frankfurt Airport employees caught malaria on the job, according to German outlet Hessischer Rundfunk. The first of the two victims died in early July. The second death came in August. All four surviving patients have since left the hospital.

The airport operator, Fraport, identified the infections as airport malaria, CNN reported. The label covers the rare cases in which the disease spreads beyond the regions where it circulates, according to CNN, citing the Frankfurt health department. The cause of the first case emerged only after the patient had died. (RELATED: Rhode Island Increases Risk Level Of West Nile Virus To High Amid More Positive Tests From Mosquitoes)

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) confirmed four infections in mid-July, with the patients falling ill between July 4 and July 6, according to its Epidemiological Bulletin. The count reached six by late August. Germany’s national public health agency assumes an infected Anopheles mosquito arrived by aircraft and passed on the infection, according to the bulletin.

The institute has urged physicians to consider airport malaria when patients present unexplained fever and report no recent travel abroad, according to the bulletin. That advice covers anyone working at or near airports served by intercontinental passenger and cargo flights, according to the RKI.

Fraport has set mosquito traps around the site and collected specimens, according to Hessischer Rundfunk. The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, will run genetic testing on the insects to identify what species they are and where they came from. The company also sent an information notice to every holder of an airport staff badge.

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“We are shocked and deeply saddened by the loss of our colleagues, and our thoughts are with their families and friends,” Fraport said in a statement to CNN.

“The mosquito is probably already dead,” Frankfurt health department chief Peter Tinnemann told Hessischer Rundfunk. He called the danger to city residents negligible, according to the broadcaster, though weather conditions do raise the odds of a mosquito lasting longer in Frankfurt, he said.

Tinnemann cautioned residents against reading malaria into every headache or fever, according to Hessischer Rundfunk. Cases reported to the RKI in July and August came only from the Rhine-Main region and are presumed connected to work at the airport, according to the institute.

Frankfurt Airport ranks as Germany’s busiest by passenger volume, according to CNN. Frankfurt logged Germany’s last documented airport malaria case in 2023, according to the RKI. A study covering Europe from 1969 to 2024 counted 145 airport and baggage malaria infections, nine of them in Germany, according to Hessischer Rundfunk.

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