KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 6 — Singapore has reported one suspected pneumonia case involving a Chinese national who travelled to Wuhan city, the site of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has sickened 44.
Singapore’s Ministry of Health said the three-year-old girl did not visit the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, that has been closed indefinitely over links to the viral pneumonia cluster, whose cause is still unknown.
“Preliminary tests showed that the case is positive for Respiratory Syncytial Virus, a common cause for childhood pneumonia. Investigations are ongoing to confirm this as the cause,” the Ministry of Health said Saturday.
China’s pneumonia outbreak has led Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to screen travellers at airports for fever. Malaysian health authorities will also implement temperature screening at airports of passengers travelling from Wuhan.
The current China pneumonia outbreak has sparked fears about the potential jump of a mysterious virus from animals to humans, like the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that infected over 8,000 people and killed almost 800 in 2003.
