NST: Health Ministry detects 162 Omicron cases between Sunday and today

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KUALA LUMPUR: Another 162 Omicron cases were detected in Malaysia between Jan 23 and today, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

This has increased the cumulative Omicron cases in the country to 601 since the World Health Organisation declared the variant as variant of concern (VOC) end of November last year.

Dr Noor Hisham said the 162 new cases comprised 59 in Selangor, 39 in Kuala Lumpur, 13 in Kedah, 10 each in Negri Sembilan and Kelantan, eight in Johor, six in Pahang, five in Perak, four in Penang, two each in Melaka, Perlis and Sabah as well as one each in Terengganu and Putrajaya.

As of today, a majority (545) of the Omicron cases were imported cases, while another 56 were local transmissions.

Selangor has the highest number of Omicron cases at 184, 88 in Kuala Lumpur, 44 each in Sarawak and Johor, 38 in Kedah, 36 in Kelantan, 33 in Perak, 31 in Negri Sembilan, 25 in Pahang, 20 in Penang, 17 in Melaka, 16 in Terengganu, 10 in Perlis, eight in Sabah, four in Labuan, and two in Putrajaya.

A majority of Omicron cases in the country comprised of sporadic cases (579) with the remaining 22 being linked to clusters.

He said to date, Malaysia has a total of 7,036 VOC cases comprising 6,188 Delta cases, 601 Omicron cases, 233 Beta cases and 14 Alpha cases.

He added that 89 of the new Omicron cases were identified by the Institute for Medical Research (IMR); 71 by the Faculty of Medicine University of Malaya (FOM-UM) and two by the Malaysia Genome and Vaccine Institute (MGI).

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