Malaysia on Wednesday reported its first case of a pregnant woman with Zika - a resident of a Malaysian state bordering Singapore where authorities have already recorded 275 cases. The 27-year-old woman in the southern state of Johor is the third case detected in Malaysia, where fears of a full-blown outbreak emanating from Singapore are mounting.
Infected pregnant women can give birth to babies with microcephaly, a deformation marked by abnormally small brains and heads. "The woman is expecting her first child and is three to four months' pregnant," Malaysia's health minister S. Subramaniam said in a statement on the ministry's Facebook page. Malaysia last Thursday reported its first case of Zika, a woman believed to have caught the virus while in Singapore. On Saturday it reported its first suspected locally transmitted case, a man in the eastern state of Sabah.