The second case is a 53-year-old woman, also from Wuhan, who arrived in Singapore on January 21. She is currently warded at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, and had stayed at J8 Hotel in Central Singapore and visited the Orchard area, Marina Bay Sands, and Gardens by the Bay before she sought medical attention.

Singapore expects to see more imported cases given the large number of those infected in China, and the high volume of travellers from China to the city state.

The country has heightened border controls, today extending its temperature checks from the airport to the Woodlands and Tuas land checkpoints between Singapore and Malaysia, as well as sea checkpoints, including ferry and cruise terminals and the Jurong Port.

Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease expert at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital in Singapore who worked on the country’s Sars outbreak, said it was a good sign that no patients outside of China had yet triggered further human-to-human transmission.

The health ministry also said all public hospitals in Singapore were equipped to deal with the novel coronavirus.

Dr Paul Tambyah, who heads the Asia-Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, said Singapore was definitely better equipped now than during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak. “Personally, I think this is going to be like the H1N1 influenza with thousands of infections but hopefully the vast majority will be mild,” he said.

Tambyah added that indications from the Chinese public health authorities were that most of those who died from the virus were older with underlying medical problems, so there was a need to make sure the elderly were well protected and taken care of.

Asian health officials fear Wuhan outbreak is larger than China’s letting on

“Hopefully, with a concerted global public health effort, the virus will be brought under control even faster than Sars,” he said. “Remember that Sars disappeared from the globe within four months of its explosive spread and apart from a few sporadic cases in 2004, a year after the global pandemic, it has not been heard of for 16 years.”

Singapore is quarantining 16 people who came into close contact with the first case, who remained in the vicinity of Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa Resort and Spa throughout his stay. They will be monitored for the development of symptoms for 14 days from their last exposure to the patient.

The authorities are trying to contact five more who came into close contact with the man. Another 24 people who came into close contact with him have since left Singapore, which will inform the relevant health authorities in their destination countries.

The health ministry is also tracing those who came into close contact with the 53-year-old woman, who had no fever during her Scoot flight that arrived in Singapore early Tuesday morning. She developed fever, cough and chills in the afternoon.

Kenneth Mak, designate director of medical services at the health ministry, said: “At this time in Singapore, there is no evidence of community spread. We believe that we’ve been able to isolate these cases early and our system of defending Singaporeans’ health remains intact.”

All travellers from China to undergo screening at Singapore airport

Japanese health officials said a man in his 40s from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicentre of the outbreak, was in a stable condition at a hospital in Tokyo after testing positive for the virus.

The East Asian nation confirmed its first case last week after a man in his 30s from Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, returned from a trip to Wuhan with a fever.

Tokyo raised its infectious disease advisory level for China’s Hubei province to 3, telling its citizens not to take any trips there due to the outbreak, the Foreign Ministry said.

South Korea’s health ministry confirmed the country’s second infection after a 55-year-old man who had been working in Wuhan returned home earlier this week with symptoms of the virus. The country confirmed its first case on Monday, after a Chinese resident tested positive.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun was due to convene an emergency meeting on Friday to coordinate the response of different ministries to the outbreak, according to the prime minister’s office.

Thailand confirmed its fifth case of the coronavirus, a senior public health official said.

“The patient is a 33-year-old woman from Wuhan on vacation,” Deputy Public Health Minister Sathit Patucha said, adding that she was under quarantine at Rajavithi hospital and her condition was improving.

The woman arrived in Bangkok on January 21 with her daughter and visited a private hospital complaining of a fever, coughing and muscle aches before being transferred to a government hospital on January 23, Sathit said.

Her daughter tested negative for the virus.

A Nepali student home from China tested positive for the virus, an official said on Friday, making it the first confirmed case in the Himalayan nation.

“One patient tested positive for coronavirus. He is a Nepali student studying in China,” Health Ministry spokesperson Mahendra Shrestha said.

The student had come home on holiday from Wuhan. He is being kept under surveillance and those in close contact with him were being investigated.

Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son said authorities would continue to monitor for symptoms among travellers at airports in Nha Trang and Danang, where there were large numbers of Chinese arrivals.

The deadly diseases Hong Kong and Asia have beaten before

In Australia, where there have been no confirmed cases, health authorities in New South Wales on Friday said they were investigating four possible cases, later announcing that two had been cleared. Health officials in Queensland said they were looking into two potential infections. On Thursday, authorities in Sydney screened passengers arriving on a flight from Wuhan for symptoms of the virus.

Philippine media on Friday reported that close to 500 tourists who arrived in Kalibo, Aklan on January 23 would be returned to their point of origin, according to an aviation official.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) spokesperson Eric Apolonio said Pan Pacific Airlines and Royal Air will fly the visitors back to the Chinese city from Friday to Saturday and the planes will return to the country empty.

He said the carriers have secured permission from Wuhan’s airport authorities to fly the passengers back from Kalibo.

The virus, which has been linked to a market in Wuhan that sold live animals including exotic wildlife, shares similarities to the Sars outbreak that killed nearly 800 people in 2002-2003, although Chinese scientists say the new virus is weaker than that strain.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China, although that could change.

As of Friday afternoon, China’s National Health Commission had confirmed 875 cases of infection nationwide, with 26 deaths, including the first two to be reported from outside Hubei province.

China has placed eight cities in the province, including Wuhan, under effective quarantine, suspending incoming and outgoing flights, trains, buses and ferries.

Despite efforts to contain the spread, China’s National Health Commission said cases had been confirmed in all but two of 31 provinces.

Additional reporting by Meaghan Tobin, Agence France-Presse and Reuters