AKIPRESS.COM - Malaysia's Health Ministry said yesterday that it has been in contact with its Singapore counterpart to exchange information on the Zika virus, and that Malaysia is free of the virus so far, says The Straits Times.

"The Singapore Health Ministry has confirmed a case involving a permanent resident who was infected with the Zika virus after visiting Brazil, and that the patient has never visited Malaysia," the Health Ministry's director-general, Datuk Noor Hisham Abdullah, said in a statement.

Dr Noor Hisham said Malaysia has taken preventive steps against the virus including enhancing its monitoring at several immigration checkpoints.

Without early prevention, Malaysia is also at risk if its people visit the affected nations, he said.

He said 472 blood samples of people had been tested by Malaysia's National Public Health Laboratory and the Institute of Medical Research, with the virus not detected in the country as of last Thursday.

Dr Noor Hisham was commenting on Singapore's first confirmed Zika case, which was announced last Friday.

According to the latest information released by the World Health Organization, 58 countries were affected by the virus from January 2014 until May 11.

China yesterday confirmed Beijing's first imported case of Zika virus infection. The patient, a 29-year-old woman from eastern Shandong province, had returned from Venezuela last Friday.