All of the infected people were either residents of the Aljunied district or workers at a construction site owned by GuocoLand in the area. It will remain closed until the company rectifies the conditions that allowed mosquitoes to breed and steps up preventative measures, the health ministry said.
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36 of these cases were foreigners working at a construction site in the Aljunied neighbourhood in the south-east of the island. The first case of local transmission was confirmed on Saturday, 27 August, following blood and urine tests. “I heard quite a lot about how harmful Zika virus is to girls, especially pregnant women”.
Zika causes only mild symptoms for most people, such as fever and a rash, and has been detected in 58 countries particularly Brazil.
It is one of Asia’s cleanest cities and enjoys a high standard of health care, but has a chronic problem with dengue fever, which is spread by the same Aedes mosquito that carries the Zika virus. However, the consequences can be more serious if a pregnant woman is infected as her unborn child can get a birth defect known as microcephaly, that is, an abnormally small head.
Singapore had reported a case of Zika in May, in a man who had been to Brazil, the country at the center of the global Zika outbreak.
The Singapore’s ministry of health has confirmed that at least 34 persons out of the 41 cases have fully recovered while the other seven, who were still symptomatic and potentially infectious, were recovering at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore.
“She wanted to find out whether she had the virus in her blood or not”.
Taiwan issued a travel advisory for Singapore, urging travelers to watch out for mosquito bites and cautioning pregnant women and those planning to conceive to postpone trips to all areas with Zika cases.
On Monday, inspectors armed with insecticide were visiting high-rise public housing buildings to look at toilets and other areas for stagnant water, according to the AFP.
Subramaniam Sathasivam, Malaysia’s health minister, said at a news conference that 150,000 to 200,000 people commute between Johor in Malaysia and Singapore each day.
Owners of homes found with such sites can be fined up to SGD$5,000 (US$3,700).
Contractors in protective gear carried out insecticide fogging in public places, pumping a mosquito-killing mist over large areas on the ground.
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Chan noted a couple of factors that would likely have contributed to the spread of the virus in Singapore, pointing out that the 41 infected people confirmed on Sunday had worked in the contaminated area, but also traveled home to other areas of the city-state.
