He said 105 were local infections, while the remaining 14 were imported cases.

He said there were 104 cases involving highly-infectious “variants of concern” in nearly every state, especially the B.1.351 South African variant. There were also 89 cases of the B.1.351 variant, nine of the B.1.1.7 UK variant and six of the B.1.617 Indian variant.

Selangor recorded the most number of cases linked to VOCs with 42 infections. This was followed by Kelantan (18), Perak (10), Kuala Lumpur (9), Sarawak (7), Kedah (7), Penang (3), Negeri Sembilan (2), Johor (2), Perlis (2), Labuan (1) and Sabah (1).

There are also 15 cases of “variants of interest” comprising 12 cases of the P.3 Philippines variant and three of the B.1.525 Nigerian variant. They were only detected in Sarawak and Kuala Lumpur.

Noor Hisham said it was likely that the variants were already widespread within the community, with at least one VOC in every state.

“Since VOCs are found to have higher infectivity rates, this situation needs to be taken seriously by everyone. If the chain of infection is not broken, it will continue to spread and make it even more difficult for us to curb the rise of Covid-19 cases,” he said.

He added that the health ministry would continue to conduct genomic surveillance, and increase testing as well as contact tracing to manage the spread of these variants.

The government will also continue to impose enhanced movement control orders for localities with a high number of infections, to prevent the virus from spreading to other areas, he added.

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