Malaysian police detain Chinese couple for refusing quarantine

The Chinese couple took their toddler suspected of having been infected with coronavirus out of Sultanah Aminah Hospital. (Source: freemalaysiatoday.com)

The police was alerted after the Chinese couple refused to obey a directive for their two-year-old to be quarantined, saying that they did not want to miss their flight back to China.

Malaysia has reported four cases of coronavirus inflection so far.

Noor Hisham Abdullah, a senior official from the Health Ministry,  said the latest case was a 40-year-old man from Wuhan, China, who was part of a tour group that travelled by bus to the southern state of Johor from Singapore on January 22.

The man had suffered from fever the next day and sought treatment at a hospital in Johor. Tests by Malaysia's Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre confirmed he was suffering from the coronavirus, Noor Hisham said.

Earlier, Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad had announced three confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in three Chinese nationals, the first reported in Malaysia.

The three were related to a 66-year-old man confirmed by Singapore to have tested positive for the virus. The infected individuals were a 65-year-old woman, who is the wife of the man with the virus in Singapore, and their two grandsons, aged 11 and 2, Dzulkefly said.

The three have been admitted to hospital in Kuala Lumpur and were in stable conditions, the minister told a news conference.

Malaysia Airports said it had heightened screening of passengers and crew arriving from China at gateway airports across the country to minimise the potential spread of the virus.

On January 25, the Republic of Korea reported its third case of the Chinese virus.

The country earlier reported two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus strain that causes pneumonia-like sickness on January 20 and 24 and is keeping close tabs on those that may have come in contact with such people./.

VNA