Genomic Insights into Marburg Virus Strains from 2023 and 2025 Outbreaks in Kagera, Tanzania.

Abstract

Marburg virus (MARV) is the primary cause of Marburg virus disease (MVD), a severe hemorrhagic fever with a high case-fatality rate. The first reported MVD outbreak in Tanzania occurred in 2023, followed by a second outbreak in 2025, both within the Kagera region. During those MVD outbreaks, 174 suspected cases were identified; of those, 10 were laboratory confirmed. After complete genome assembly and bioinformatic analyses, we found the MARV strains of the 2023 and 2025 outbreaks to be closely related and clustered with MARV strains that caused outbreaks in Rwanda (2024) and Uganda (2014). The sequences from both MVD outbreaks in Tanzania showed >99.71% nucleotide identity, suggesting a possible single spillover event followed by limited human-to-human virus transmission. Further ecologic studies are essential to identify potential spillover events, but our findings indicate that closely related MARV strains circulate in Kagera, Tanzania, posing a risk for future outbreak recurrence.