KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31 — A news report claiming that a 23-year-old Indian national had died in Malaysia from the 2019 novel coronavirus is false.

The Health Ministry in its official Facebook account said there were no Indian nationals listed in the records of its laboratory handling clinical samples testing for coronavirus.

"Based on information received up to 6pm today (January 30), the 23-year-old Indian national as mentioned in the news report is not in the list of notifications and positive cases reported to MOH,” the ministry posting said.

According to the report in the Indian news portal, the grandfather of the said 23-year-old man had received a call from the Malaysian authorities on Wednesday, informing him that his grandson had died of the disease. — Bernama