KUCHING: The Delta variant has now been identified as the dominant variant affecting the people in the state, said Prof Dr David Perera.
The director of the Institute of Health and Community Medicine (IHCM) of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) said that the IHCM is tracking the SAR COV-2 variants circulating in the state for the committee.
“As of Aug 17, the institute had done genome sequencing on 220 positive cases and a total of 179 additional Variant of Concern (VOC) and Variant of Interest (VOI) had then been detected from them.
“Some 178 of the VIC and VOI detected were of the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, while one recent case reported Indonesian VOI (B.1.466.2) and was detected in Bintulu,” he said according to his latest report dated Aug 26 to Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas today (Aug 28).
He pointed out that the overall Delta variant detection rate of 82 percent observed in the report represents an increase from the 73 percent reported on Aug 17.
Dr David added almost all of the Kuching Division cases sequenced were of the Delta variant with a detection rate of 99 percent (68 out of 69 cases sequenced).
“High detection rate of the Delta variant was also observed in the Samarahan Division at 93 percent (38 out of 41 cases sequenced) and in the Serian Division with 95 percent (16 out of 17 cases sequenced).
“Sharp increase in the Delta variant detection rates were also observed in Bintulu with 84 per cent (20 out of 24 cases), Miri at 65 percent (nine out of 14) and in Sibu at 60 percent (16 out of 27).
“The same variant has also been detected in Mukah with a detection rate of 78 percent (seven out of nine cases sequenced) and similarly, the Delta variant had also been detected in Sarikei with one case and Betong with two cases,” he added.
“To date, an accumulative total of 771 VOC and VOI had been detected in Sarawak from over 2,000 positive cases sequenced as of August 17 this year,” he said.
