Health Ministry: 462 Delta variant Covid-19 cases from Jan 19-22

PETALING JAYA: There were 462 Covid-19 cases involving the Delta variant of concern (VOC) reported from Wednesday to Saturday (Jan 19-22).

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said this brings the cumulative cases involving VOCs and variants of interest (VOI) to 6,894.

“Of the total, most or 6,874 are cases from VOCs, while 20 are involving VOIs,” he said in a statement on Saturday (Jan 22).

The Delta variant topped the list of VOC cases with 6,188, followed by Omicron with 439.

A total of 233 cases involved Beta while 14 were of the Alpha variant.

For VOI, 13 cases were from the Theta variant, four from Kappa and three from Eta.

On the daily Covid-19 figures, new cases increased to 4,116 on Saturday compared to 4,046 on Friday (Jan 21).

“Of the 4,116 new cases, 99.1% are in Categories One and Two,” Dr Noor Hisham said.

Only 39 cases or 0.9% were in Categories Three, Four and Five.

He said there were 2,858 recoveries, bringing the recovery rate to 97.3% or 2,753,119 cases.

“A total of 141 cases are being treated in the intensive care unit, with 116 being confirmed Covid-19 cases while 25 were suspected cases,” he said, adding that 62 required ventilator support.

Of the 62, 44 were confirmed to have the coronavirus while 18 were cases under investigation.

Nine new clusters were reported, taking the number of active clusters in Malaysia to 225.

The nation’s infectivity rate or Rt value now stands at 1.03, based on cases reported on Friday (Jan 21).