KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 31): 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 Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) identified 39 Delta variant cases, Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPROMISE), 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 Variant 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 today.

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

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