A sick Angolan traveller under observation in South Africa as a possible victim of the deadly Marburg virus has been determined to be suffering from Malaria, health officials said on Thursday.

Gauteng provincial health department spokesman Popo Maja said doctors were no longer observing the man, who was taken to hospital on Tuesday after arriving on a flight from Angola, which is battling the world’s worst ever Marburg outbreak.

“We are ruling out Marburg,” Maja told Reuters. “He is responding very well to malaria treatment, and is no longer under observation in the isolation ward.”

Early symptoms of malaria closely resemble those of Marburg, an incurable haemorrhagic fever related to Ebola which has killed 239 people in Angola over the past several weeks.

Most have died in the northern province of Uige, although a few cases have been recorded in other areas, including Luanda, among people who have travelled from Uige.