KUALA LUMPUR – The Health Ministry (MoH) has detected 134 new cases involving SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VoC) from October 7 to 19, says Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said they comprised 132 Delta cases (B.1.617.2) and two Beta cases (B.1.351), bringing the total number of VoC cases in the country to 2,366.
He said the new development takes the cumulative number of Delta cases to 2,128, and Beta to 224 cases.
“Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI-UKM) identified 79 Delta variant cases, Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPROMISE-UiTM) detected 10 Delta variant cases, Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (TIDREC-UM) (seven Delta variant cases) and the Malaysia Genome Institute (MGI) detected one case of the Delta variant.
“Meanwhile, the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) identified 37 cases, 35 involving the Delta variant and two Beta variant cases," he said in a Facebook post today.
Dr Noor Hisham said the three states that recorded the highest number of new Delta cases are Johor with 43, followed by Negri Sembilan (18) and Melaka (15).
However, he said no new cases involving variants of interest (VoI) were detected in the same period.
Another VoC that has been detected in Malaysia is the Alpha variant, with a total of 14 cases so far, while VoI cases comprise 13 cases of the Theta variant, Kappa variant (four cases) and Eta variant (three cases). – Bernama, October 19, 2021
