On Thursday, Malaysia announced its first imported case of Zika in a 58-year-old woman who had visited Singapore, where the official number of Zika infections had reached 189 on Friday.
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Singapore has reported 215 cases of Zika infections, as scientists in the city-state said the virus strain came from within Asia and was not imported from Brazil.
As the main carrier is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also carries dengue and chikungunya – a condition causing weak and painful limbs for months at a time – there is an air of familiarity here about preventive measures and coping with the disease. The virus is best known for causing the severe birth defect microcephaly, characterized by undersized heads and underdeveloped brains.
The Ministry said earlier on Saturday that the man was believed to be the first locally-transmitted Zika infection in the country.
The health ministry has strengthened preparedness to prevent further spread of Zika virus in the country.
He said travel to the Olympics would make up “less than 1 percent” of all travel to South American countries affected by the Zika virus.
The committee restated the advice it provided to the director-general in its previous meetings in the areas of public health research on microcephaly, other neurological disorders and Zika virus, surveillance, vector control, risk communications, clinical care, travel measures, research and product development related to vaccines, therapeutics, and laboratory tests.
As the outbreak spreads, many of Singapore’s five million people are covering up and staying indoors to avoid mosquitoes as health experts warn that virus in the tropical city-state would be hard to contain.
Florida is the only state in the continental United States to report locally transmitted cases of the virus.
The Zika virus doesn’t pose a significant health threat to most people, except pregnant women and fetuses.
More than 164,000 confirmed and suspected cases of Zika and nearly 1,500 cases of the Guillain-Barre syndrome were reported from April 2015 to March 2016 in Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Suriname and Venezuela.
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An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, making it hard for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.
