{"id":28238,"date":"2016-09-01T03:46:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T03:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/malaysia-reports-first-case-of-zika-virus\/"},"modified":"2016-09-01T03:46:24","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T03:46:24","slug":"malaysia-reports-first-case-of-zika-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/malaysia-reports-first-case-of-zika-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia reports first case of Zika virus"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Woman contracted disease after travelling to Singapore, where 115 people have been infected.}<\/p>\n

Malaysia has reported its first case of Zika – a woman who tested positive for the mosquito-borne virus after a visit to neighbouring Singapore, where 115 people have been infected.<\/p>\n

The 58-year-old victim had shown signs of a rash and fever one week after coming back from Singapore late last month, officials said on Thursday. <\/p>\n

“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. <\/p>\n

The Zika virus, which has spread through the Americas and the Caribbean since last year, is generally a mild disease but is a particular risk to pregnant women.<\/p>\n

It has been linked to microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.<\/p>\n

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said Singapore was the only Asian nation with active Zika virus transmission. Officials in the city-state reported the first locally transmitted infection on Saturday and said on Wednesday the number had jumped to 115.<\/p>\n

“Over time, we expect Zika cases to emerge from more areas,” Singapore’s Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“We must work and plan on the basis that there is Zika transmission in other parts of Singapore and extend our vector control efforts beyond the current affected areas.”<\/p>\n

Twenty-one Chinese nationals, 13 Indians, six Bangladeshis, and an Indonesian are also among the 115 cases of Zika reported in Singapore, foreign officials said.<\/p>\n

Many are believed to be overseas workers at building sites in Singapore, although the Singapore government has not given details of the victims by nationality.<\/p>\n

More than 55 million people pass through Singapore’s Changi airport every year. In the first half of this year, tourism arrivals topped 8 million, around 1 million more than a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans, but a small number of cases of sexual transmission have been reported in the US and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

A case of suspected transmission through a blood transfusion in Brazil has raised questions about other ways Zika may spread.<\/p>\n

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin of dengue and chikungunya and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Woman contracted disease after travelling to Singapore, where 115 people have been infected.} Malaysia has reported its first case of Zika – a woman who tested positive for the mosquito-borne virus after a visit to neighbouring Singapore, where 115 people have been infected. The 58-year-old victim had shown signs of a rash and fever one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28238"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28238"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}