Doctors have also found other problems in pregnancies and among fetuses and infants infected with Zika virus before birth.
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In a statement on its website, the ministry said following the tests, 36 foreign workers tested positive, of whom seven are now warded at the Communicable Diseases Centre (CDC) at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
It comes just two days after Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed the first case of a person being infected with the mosquito-borne virus.
The Singapore government on Tuesday intensified efforts to destroy Aedes mosquito breeding habitats in a southeastern suburb as the number of confirmed Zika cases rose to 56.
The disease is also being linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome and microcephaly, a condition of abnormal smallness of the head among babies of infected mothers.
Inspectors from the Singaporean National Environment Agency checking for mosquito breeding sites visited homes in the suburban district where 41 cases were reported over the weekend, including 36 involving foreign workers at a condominium construction project. “NEA has deployed more than 200 officers to inspect the area and conduct outreach to residents and other stakeholders in the vicinity”, the MOH statement reads.
Seventy-eight tested negative and five cases were pending. The suspects had been sent to Communicable Disease Centre (CDC) at Tan Tock Seng Hospital by TJ Medical and Surgery clinic at Blk 48 on Monday (29 August). Singapore hosts a large contingent of workers from the Asian subcontinent. As of Wednesday, the only locally-acquired Zika cases in the United States occurred in Florida and the territories of American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, according to the CDC.
Pregnant women and their partners are urged not to travel to some four dozen countries – majority in the Caribbean and Latin America – where Zika virus is now active.
On May 13, Singapore reported its first imported Zika virus case and this is the second of the confirmed Zika cases in this year.
The World Health Organization said on Sunday it did not know “which lineage of Zika is circulating” in Singapore or “what the level of population immunity is to this lineage of Zika in Asia”.
“There is an urgent need to identify therapeutic approaches to halt Zika infection, especially in pregnant women”, researcher Marco Onorati said in a statement.
Ubial said those who are manifesting symptoms like fever, cough, colds and had history of travel to Zika-affected countries are being tested.
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In Canada, there have been 232 travel-related Zika cases and two sexually-transmitted ones.
