PETALING JAYA: There were 486 new cases of Covid-19 variants recorded from Jan 10 to 14, says Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
Of these, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak’s Institute of Health and Community Medicine identified 317 cases as the variant of concern (VOC), Delta, said the Health director-general.
He added that Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Medicine, the Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Medical Molecular Biology Institute had also identified 84, 58 and 27 new cases respectively, which were also of the Delta variant.
“This brings the cumulative cases infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus – that is categorised as the VOC and variant of interest (VOI) – to 6,246 cases.
“Of this total, 6,226 cases were categorised as VOC while 20 cases were listed as VOI,” Dr Noor Hisham said in a statement yesterday.
To date, the VOC lists 5,726 Delta variant cases, 253 Omicron variant cases, 233 Beta variant cases, and 14 Alpha variant cases, he added.
Dr Noor Hisham said the VOI cases registered 13 Theta, four Kappa and three Eta variants.
Separately, he noted that the country recorded 3,346 new cases in the latest 24-hour span, of which 3,079 cases were local transmission and 267 imported.
“Of the 3,346 cases reported today (yesterday), 49 cases (2%) were in Categories Three, Four and Five.
“The remaining 3,297 cases (98%) consisted of those in Categories One and Two,” he added.
Dr Noor Hisham said that there were 3,052 total recoveries, bringing the cumulative figure to 2,729,943.
He also said that there were 204 cases in intensive care, with 95 cases requiring ventilator support.
There were also three new clusters reported, bringing the cumulative active clusters in the country to 172.
