New cases of the deadly Wuhan virus were reported Thursday in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
An Indian nurse working in Saudi Arabia has tested positive for the SARS-like virus, according to the Indian Foreign Ministry.
Indian media reports said that the nurse may have contracted the virus while caring for a colleague from the Philippines who had tested positive.
However, neither Riyadh nor Delhi have reported any cases of the virus in their respective countries.
“About 100 Indian nurses… working at Al-Hayat hospital have been tested and none except one nurse was found infected by Corona virus,” said V Muraleedharan. minister of state for foreign affairs.
“Affected nurse is being treated at Aseer National Hospital and is recovering well,” he tweeted.
Muraleedharan confirmed to AFP that it was the same respiratory virus that has claimed 17 lives since emerging in Wuhan, infecting more than 570 of other people nationwide.
In Vietnam, two Chinese nationals have tested positive for virus and are being treated in hospital, officials said.
A Chinese man living in Ho Chi Minh City was infected by his father, who traveled to Vietnam on January 13 from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus.
The father was hospitalized on January 17 with a high fever, days before his son showed symptoms, health officials said. Both were quarantined.
“The patients have shown signs of good recovery, [their] fever has reduced and they can eat now,” Doctor Nguyen Ngoc Sang said Thursday at a meeting at Ho Chi Minh City’s Cho Ray hospital.
Vietnam’s deputy health minister urged all precautions to avoid any further spread.
“We should immediately test any suspected cases so that we can detect [the disease] quicker. We don’t want it to spread to the public,” Nguyen Truong Son said at the meeting attended by reporters.
Meanwhile, Singapore confirmed its first case of the virus.
The Ministry of Health said the patient was a 66-year-old man from Wuhan who arrived in Singapore with his family on Monday.
He was immediately isolated after arriving at a hospital with a fever and cough, and test results later confirmed he was infected with the coronavirus.
One of his travelling companions, a 37-year-old man from Wuhan, has also been admitted to hospital as a suspect case.
It added that Singapore was expecting more cases and alarms “given the high volume of international travel”.
– AFP