Singapore on Saturday reported its first two confirmed deaths related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The city-state’s health ministry said the two patients who died were a 75-year-old woman, and a 64-year-old man.

The female patient had pre-existing conditions including heart disease, while the male patient had been hospitalized in Indonesia for pneumonia, and also had a history of heart disease, according to the health ministry.

Singapore has been lauded globally for its approach in managing the outbreak, with no fatalities before Saturday even as deaths have surged elsewhere in Asia and worldwide. In February, the World Health Organization said it was “very impressed” with the way the city-state has managed the outbreak.

“We are very impressed with the efforts they are making to find every case, follow up with contacts, and stop transmission,” WHO had said in February.

Professor Dale Fisher, who chairs the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, said Singapore has been very good at shutting down transmission chains, local newspaper the Straits Times reported on Saturday.

But the number of cases in Singapore surged this week as compared to earlier in March and February. Most of the new cases were imported — attributed to travelers returning to the country from the United States, Europe or other parts of Asia.

The daily new cases had jumped past 40 this week, versus  below 10 at the lows earlier in March. The total number of cases were at 385, as of Friday.

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