The Malaysian Insight

FOURTEEN people were found to be infected with the deadlier South African variant of Covid-19 today, said director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The cumulative number of cases of the variant in the country now stands at 62.

He said the variant had spread to several states including Kelantan, Perak, Selangor and Negri Sembilan.

“Today, we saw that seven of these cases came from Kg Dormis in Kelantan and one from a health worker there, another three cases were from a close contact in Selangor, two cases were detected in Kedah and one case in Negri Sembilan,” he said during a press conference in Putrajaya.

He said health authorities detected that the South Africa variant was spreading mostly in Kelantan, Kedah, Perak, Selangor and Negri Sembilan.

Meanwhile, Noor Hisham said there were currently three virus variants that the health authorities were monitoring – the South African B1.351 variant, the UK variant and India’s double-mutant variant.

Eight people have been infected with the UK variant, two with India’s double mutant variant and, 62 with the South African B1.351 variant.

Noor Hisham said the authorities were watching out for the Brazilian variant, which had yet to make its presence known on these shores.

He said the new variants were worrying as they had a high infectivity and mortality rate.

He warned that infection could cause steroid drugs to be ineffective for Covid-19 patients.

He said the new strains had infected many young people who had needed intensive care.

Noor Hisham said it was concerning that 80% of the cases were detected within the community and not clusters.

He hoped MCO 3.0 would be able to contain the spread of the variants. – May 11, 2021.