Singapore hit by first case of locally transmitted Zika virus infection
Published 30 min ago
Lin Yangchen
SINGAPORE - In the first case of locally-transmitted Zika infection here, a 47-year-old Malaysian woman living in Aljunied Crescent tested positive for the virus on Saturday (Aug 27) at the Communicable Diseases Centre (CDC) at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
The patient, who had not travelled to Zika-affected areas recently, had developed symptoms two days earlier and was referred to the CDC by a geeral practitioner the day after, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and National Environment Agency (NEA) said in a statement. She is hospitalised but is recovering.
This is not the first case of Zika here. In May this year, a 48-year-old permanent resident was thought to have caught the virus on a business trip to Sao Paulo in Brazil.
The two agencies said that importation of the virus from overseas is inevitable given the high volume of travel to and from Singapore, and that local transmission is also possible given the presence of the Aedes mosquito that spreads the virus.
Furthermore, as many of the people infected with Zika do not show symptoms, some transmission may already have taken place before the latest case of Zika was identified.
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