KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 — A total of 392 positive Covid-19 cases involving variants of concern (VOC) was detected in the country from Sept 25 until yesterday, according to Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

Of the total, he said 384 cases were of the Delta variant and eight others were of Beta variant.

Dr Noor Hisham said the study on the 'Spike Protein Covid-19' mutation in Malaysia was conducted by six consortia, namely UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI-UKM), Universiti Malaya (UM) Medical Faculty, Universiti Teknologi Mara Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPROMISE), UM Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (TIDREC-UM), Malaysia Genome Institute (MGI) and Institute for Medical Research (IMR).

He said the latest development brought the cumulative number of cases categorised as VOC and Variants Under Monitoring (VUM) to 2,252 cases.

Dr Noor Hisham said of the 2,252 cases detected, a total of 2,232 cases were VOC and 20 others were variants of interest (VOI).

"Overall, there are 1,996 Delta variant cases, 222 Beta variant cases and 14 Alpha variant cases are in the VOC category,” he said.

The World Health Organisation has, on Sept 30, listed Theta, Kappa and Eta under the VUM. Previously, all three were categorised as VOI.

Now, only Lamba and Mu are categorised as VOI. — Bernama