A 4-year-old girl was officially cured of the novel coronavirus (nCov) in Malaysia on Tuesday, February 4, becoming the nation’s first successfully treated case.

Her story was shared by Datuk Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, Director General of Health Malaysia, in a Facebook post showing the girl’s family smiling.

The unnamed girl, who is from China, is the first of 12 coronavirus patients in Malaysia to be cured. Of all the confirmed cases, nine are Chinese nationals.

According to Mashable, the girl began exhibiting symptoms of the potentially deadly virus during a family vacation in Langkawi, Malaysia. She was subsequently admitted to the Sultanah Maliha Hospital on January 29 to undergo treatment. A week later, she was discharged after testing negative twice for the 2019-nCoV strain of coronavirus, meaning she was officially virus-free.

According to Malaysia’s Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Dzulkefly Ahmad, the girl recovered when her symptoms were treated by medical staff. “No special drug or antiviral medicine was used. Medical experts have said the 2019-nCoV is self-limiting, whereby our antibodies will end the virus’ life cycle,” he said in a press conference, according to the New Straits Times.

Good news comes in pairs, so says a Chinese proverb. It certainly seemed so when neighbouring country Singapore also discharged its first recovered coronavirus patient on the same day. The patient was a 35-year-old man from Wuhan who arrived in Singapore on January 23.

“Perception among the public that the 2019-nCoV is fatal (could not be treated) after one has been infected by the virus is certainly wrong,” Dr. Hisham told the New Straits Times.

In the past two weeks, horror stories and tragic news about the coronavirus has left many across the world panic-stricken. As we continue to battle the epidemic, it seems like things are finally starting to look up, at least in some parts of the world.

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