265 Delta cases detected over past 2 weeks

Ongoing studies by three research institutes in the country have identified 265 cases involving variants of concern (VOC), namely the Delta variant (B.1.617.2), from Aug 16 to 29.

Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the Institute of Medical Research identified 39 Delta variant cases, followed by the Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute, Universiti Teknologi Mara (48 cases) and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Institute of Health and Community Medicine (178 cases).

“This brings the total cases involving the SARS-CoV-2 virus categorised as VOC and variants of interest (VOI) to 1,221 cases.

“From the total detected, 1,201 cases are VOC while 20 cases are VOI,” he said in a Facebook post.

Noor Hisham said overall, up until now, for the VOC category there have been 978 cases of the Delta variant, 209 cases of the Beta variant and 14 cases of the Alpha variant.

For the VOI category, 13 cases have been of the Theta variant, four cases of the Kappa variant and three cases of the Eta variant.