The Malaysian Insight

MALAYSIA recently detected two Covid-19 infections of the Delta Plus variant in two students returning from the United Kingdom.

Health director-general Dt Noor Hisham Abdullah said the two students arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on October 2 and the results of their first RT-PCR test were negative.

However, a second test taken on October 7 while they were under quarantine came back positive.

The health DG said Covid-19 vaccines are still effective against the strain and measures such as quarantine can reduce the risk of transmission.

The mutated strain of the highly contagious Delta variant, known as AY.4.2, has been prevalent in the UK.

The strain was detected after full genome sequencing was conducted by the UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute.

The UK Health Security Agency recently classified it as a “variant under investigation”. At this juncture, there is no evidence to suggest that this variant makes people more ill, although concerns about it being more highly transmissible are present.

The sub-variant has yet to be classified as a variant of concern (VOC) unlike Delta.

“This sub-lineage has become increasingly common in the UK in recent months, and there is some early evidence that it may have an increased growth rate in the UK compared to Delta,” the  BBC quoted UKHSA as saying last month.

The World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological report on October 27 that AY.4.2 is a newly designated Pango lineage within Delta VOC, which has three additional mutations, including two in the spike protein, namely A222V and Y145H.

“An increase in AY.4.2 sequence submissions has been observed since July 2021, and as of 25 October, over 26,000 AY.4.2 sequences have been uploaded to GISAID from 42 countries,” it said.

The GISAID Initiative entails the rapid sharing of data from all influenza viruses and the coronavirus causing Covid-19.

The majority (93%) of these sequences were reported from the UK, where a gradual increase in the proportional contribution of AY.4.2 has been observed; accounting for an estimated 5.9% of overall Delta cases reported in the week beginning 3 October 2021, it said.

It said epidemiological and laboratory studies are ongoing to assess whether AY.4.2 has any additional phenotypic impacts such as a change in transmissibility or a decrease in the ability of antibodies to block the virus.

Meanwhile, studies coming out of India said the efficacy of vaccines against the AY.4.2 does not seem to be different from that of other Delta variants.

“There is currently no biological basis for increased transmissibility of AY.4.2, as judged epidemiologically, and assays are in progress,” the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) said in its weekly bulletin.

However, Israel’s Health Ministry said on October 25 that the variant is 15% more contagious than the original Delta variant although not more deadly or vaccine-resistant than it. This was based on preliminary findings of the ministry’s investigation.

The strain has been found in over 40 countries including the UK, India, the United States, Israel and Russia. – November 10, 2021.