The other two cases have no known links to any existing cluster but the authorities did not specify where these cases were located from.
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According to health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, the 61-year-old man from Taman Public Jaya in Likas passed away at 5.30pm.
“He died of complications from his underlying heart disease”, he said, adding that the full results of the investigation into the cause of death are pending.
He was admitted to the emergency and trauma unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital 2 on Aug 31 for further treatment.
Speaking after a meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on Zika, its chairman David Heymann said the disease continued to constitute an worldwide health emergency although the risk to people attending the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro this month was low.
Thirty-one new cases of Zika have been confirmed in Singapore, raising to 151 the number of persons infected by the mosquito-borne virus in the Southeast Asian city-state, the government said on Friday.
“The man, however, has not recently traveled to Zika-affected countries and was likely bitten by an infected Aedes mosquito here”.
“We are carrying out control measures against aedes mosquitoes near the woman’s home to prevent the spread of the virus”, Subramaniam Sathasivam, the Malaysian health minister, said at a news conference.
On Thursday, Malaysia reported the first Zika case on its soil – a 58-year-old woman who is believed to have contracted it on a visit to neighbouring Singapore, where 150 cases have been confirmed.
“The impact of Zika would be marginal at worst”, said Nomura Singapore’s economist Brian Tan.
“It is very risky for pregnant women to get infected with the Zika virus as this has been linked to the birth of babies with severe brain and other neurological defects, including microcephaly (a rare condition where a baby has a small head)”, said the DOH chief. In addition, close contacts of the patient will be examined if they have fever or other Zika virus infection symptoms.
Dr David Heymann, the committee’s chair, said considerable gaps remain in understanding Zika and the complications it causes, including brain-damaged babies, and the World Health Organization concluded that the outbreak remains a global emergency.
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The newspaper reported: “although she has been diagnosed with Zika, her family members have not been offered testing for Zika”.
