PETALING JAYA: Analysis of new Covid-19 cases shows over 1,000 cases were of the Delta variant, says the Health Ministry.

       "Ongoing analysis revealed 1,047 cases were variants of concern (VOC), which is the Delta (B.1.617.2)," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday (Nov 4).

       The ministry said this was revealed by ongoing analysis by the Institute of Health and Community Medicine (IHCM-UNIMAS), UKM Medical Molecular Biology (UMBI-UKM), Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPROMISE-UiTM) and the Malaysia Genome Institute (MGI).

       Following this, the ministry said that there were currently 3,672 VOC and 20 variants of interest detected so far.

       Meanwhile, the ministry said that there were 5,713 new cases reported as of Thursday (Nov 4), of which 5,681 were local cases and 32 imported cases.

       Of the new cases, only 1.6%, or 93 cases were deemed under category 3, 4 and 5, which required admission and treatment, the ministry said.

       "The other 5,620 cases, or 98.4%, were in category 1 and 2," the ministry added.

       Cases under category 1 and 2 were those placed under quarantine and observation.

       The ministry said that there were 555 cases requiring treatment at the intensive care unit (ICU), of which 519 were confirmed to be Covid-19 infections while 36 were still under investigation.

       "A total of 280 cases require breathing assistance of which 218 are Covid-19 cases and 62 suspected cases are still under investigations," the ministry added.

       The ministry said that five new clusters were detected on Thursday (Nov 4), bringing the number of active clusters to 367 nationwide.

       As of Thursday (Nov 4), there were a total of 2,492,343 Covid-19 cases since the pandemic outbreak last year, of which 96.1% or 2,396,244 patients had recovered.