One patient died and another is critically ill in a Boston hospital after receiving a kidney from the same donor who was infected with a hard-to-detect virus, health authorities said Tuesday.

The patients, a 70-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man, received kidneys from a 49-year-old homeless man who suffered irreversible brain damage after cardiac arrest. He was carrying a germ called lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, or LCMV, the Boston Globe reports.

LCMV, which is often transmitted by rodents, also killed three transplant patients from Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 2005.

Dr. Alfred DeMaria of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said patients are waiting too long for an organ before getting it. Waiting for too long makes them lose hope they will ever have the chance of being healthy again. That’s why these patients assume high risks when deciding to accept organs from possible infected people.

“People are literally dying for organs. The list of potential things you can test for is enormous. But balancing that against the risk of not getting the organs, you have to make decisions about what’s feasible and what’s not feasible to test for,” Dr. DeMaria said, as quoted by the Boston Globe.

The donor died in mid-March and after the family’s authorization for removal, organs were tested for AIDS, hepatitis B and C and other diseases regularly checked by the New England Organ Bank, the region’s organ procurement agency, but there was no evidence of worrisome infections.