KUALA LUMPUR: Another 186 Omicron cases were reported between Jan 14 and Jan 18, bringing the cumulative number of cases of the variant of concern (VOC) in Malaysia to 439.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 41 of the 186 Omicron cases were detected in Selangor, 26 in Sarawak, 20 in Johor, 17 in Kuala Lumpur, 16 in Perak, 12 in Negri Sembilan, nine each in Kelantan and Pahang, eight in Kedah, seven in Terengganu, five each in Melaka, Sabah and Penang, four in Labuan and one each in Putrajaya and Perlis.
He said out of the 439 Omicron cases detected in Malaysia so far, 385 of them were imported cases and 54 local transmissions, adding that 422 of these infections were sporadic, while the other 17 were linked to clusters.
Dr Noor Hisham also revealed that the number of VOC cases in the country now stood at 6,412.
Besides the Omicron cases, the other VOC infections involved the Delta (5,726), Beta (233) and Alpha (14) variants.
The new VOC cases were identified by the Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute, Universiti Teknologi Mara (iPROMISE-UiTM); The Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre, Universiti Malaya (TIDREC-UM); Malaysia Genome and Vaccine Institute (MGI); Institute of Medical Research (IMR) and Institute of Health and Community Medicine, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (IHCM-UNIMAS).