KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry will enhance existing genomics surveillance apart from speeding-up ongoing booster shots programme under the National Immunisation Programme to provide added protection against the new Covid-19 coronavirus named Omicron.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said these new approaches are in addition to the travel restriction imposed from several sub-saharan African countries where the new coronavirus variant has emerged.
"Members of the public have been advised to wear their face masks, avoid crowded places as well as practice #TRIIS (test, report, isolate)," he said in a Twitter posting.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared Omicron as "variant of concern".
The world health body said the new coronavirus had a large number of mutations, and early evidence suggested an increased re-infection risk.
The new coronaviorus was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on Nov 24 and it has also been identified in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.
Malaysia has imposed a temporary entry ban on foreigners from several southern African countries without permanent resident (PR) status or working visas following the discovery of Omicron.
Khairy on Friday aid the travel ban will take effect from today.
The minister said other measures includes prohibiting Malaysians from visiting South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
The Immigration Department has been informed of the temporary restriction on those who had travel history within 14 days to the countries, said Khairy.
On Friday, WHO said the number of cases of this variant, initially named B.1.1.529, appeared to be increasing in almost all of South Africa's provinces.
"This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning," the UN public health body said in a statement.
It said "the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9 November".
The WHO said it would take a few weeks to understand the impact of the new variant, as scientists worked to determine how transmissible it was.
Besides Delta, Omicron and the three other VOCs, there are currently two lower variants of interest and below that, a further seven under monitoring.
Delta, which is more transmissible than the original strain, is now overwhelmingly dominant around the world, having all but out-competed other variants.
Of 845,000 sequences uploaded to the GISAID global science initiative with specimens collected in the last 60 days, 99.8 percent were Delta.