KUCHING: As of July 22, 93 Covid-19 Delta (B.1.617.2) variant cases have been recorded in Sarawak, making it the highest in the country.
Based on the statistics released by the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) Facebook page on Friday (July 23), 92 of the cases were local transmissions while one was imported.
The statistics also showed that 10 Delta cases were reported in the Sentosa Cluster 2 in Kuching, followed by Tembok Sri Aman Cluster in Sri Aman (five), Pagar Serian in Serian (four), Salak Land Cluster in Kuching (three), Sungai Bedil Besar Cluster in Kuching (two), and Duyoh Cluster (one) in Bau.
The first Delta case was reported on July 8, involving a man aged 56.
Overall, there are 189 Delta cases in the country, of which 179 are local transmissions while 10 are imported.
Pahang is next with 18 cases followed by Selangor with 17, Labuan with 14, Kuala Lumpur with 11, Johor with nine, Negeri Sembilan with seven, Melaka with five, Kedah with four and Sabah with three.
Putrajaya and Perlis recorded two cases each while Kelantan, Perak, Terengganu and Penang recorded one each.
MoH said ongoing studies by the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) and the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) Institution of Community Health and Medicine (IHCM) identified 119 cases of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 virus – all cases were Variant of Concern (VOC).
It said that there were 106 Delta cases, 10 Beta (B.1.351) cases; and three Alpha cases (B.1.1.7), thus bringing the cumulative number of cases infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus categorised as VOC and Variants of Interest (VOI) to 429 in the country.
Of the total detected, 409 cases were VOC while 20 were VOI, MoH added.
MOH said to date, in total, for VOC, there were 206 cases of Beta, 189 cases of Delta and 14 cases of Alpha, while for VOI, there were 13 cases of Theta, four cases of Kappa, and three cases of Eta.
