Tracked - 69 who had contact with first local coronavirus transmission patient

CORONAVIRUS | The Health Ministry has tracked down a total of 69 people who have had close contact with a 41-year-old man responsible for the first local human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) which originated from Wuhan, China.

Referred to as patient "Case 9", the Malaysian man was among those infected at a business meeting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore and later infected his sister upon returning to Malaysia, referred to as "Case 13", who tested positive on Feb 6.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said a total of 69 people who had close contact with patient "Case 9" were screened and all tested negative.

 There have been no new local transmission cases, she added.

"We had done contact-tracing, he was in contact with 69 people. They were family members and five neighbours, all were negative," she said.

"Case 9", who tested positive for the virus on Feb 4, was the most significant development as he was the first Malaysian to be infected and was also responsible for the first human-to-human transmission in the country. 

All previous cases had been imported cases, meaning that the patients contracted the coronavirus overseas.

In a related development, Wan Azizah revealed another new case today, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 16. However, the latest case is also an imported incident.

The latest patient is a 67-year-old woman from China who is a family friend of “Case 14”, a 37-year-old woman, also from China.

Wan Azizah, who is the National Disaster Management Committee (Nadma) chairperson, also revealed that the “Case 4” patient, a 40-year-old man from China, has gone through two repeat testings which have both come back negative for the virus.

“(The patient) is waiting for the results of the third repeat testing.

“‘Case 4’ had pneumonia and the hospital started him on anti-retroviral treatment. He was found to respond well to this treatment.

“He will be allowed to be discharged after the results of the third repeat testing are obtained shortly,” she said.

This is the same treatment given to the four-year-old girl, “Case 6”, who was the first patient to recover from the virus in Malaysia, Wan Azizah said.

She also said that Putrajaya will have talks with Singapore as soon as possible after Singapore recently raised its alert to the orange level, which is the republic's second-highest alert level.

“We will discuss (with Singapore) as soon as possible.

“When we discuss, we are concerned about sporadic cases. So far all our cases are from China, from the humanitarian mission (from Wuhan).

“We don’t want to have any cases (of transmission) from a Malaysian to a Malaysian who has never gone outside of Malaysia to China, or have not had contact with anyone from China,” she said.

The Malaysian government had earlier imposed a travel ban on Chinese visitors from the Hubei province and Wuhan city.

After that, Wan Azizah had announced that the travel ban imposed on Chinese visitors from Hubei and Wuhan would be extended to other provinces, following the lockdown on movement issued by the Chinese government on those areas.

She said the measure had been decided upon given the current status of coronavirus infections.

She had also said that Malaysian Immigration authorities would implement a travel ban as soon as the Chinese government declared a lockdown for a particular province.

The increased restrictions come as the virus spreads to more parts of China as well as other parts of the world.

Over 28,403 cases have been reported worldwide, of which 28,130 are in mainland China.

Cases of local human-to-human transmission have also been reported outside of China in places such as S Korea, Japan and one case in Malaysia.

Singapore, which has 33 confirmed cases so far, raised its alert level to orange today after finding several cases of the virus in patients who had no recent travel history to China nor had any contact with known cases.

 - Mkini