James Kon & Izah Azahari
Genomic sequencing is a relatively time-consuming process, typically taking between three and four weeks to complete a test.
Minister of Health Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohd Isham bin Haji Jaafar highlighted this at the daily press conference yesterday, in response to why it had taken a month to analyse the Omicron BA.4 sub-variant.
No local transmissions of the BA.4 sub-variant have yet been detected despite the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) continued surveillance of local COVID-19 cases.
Although testing has momentarily shifted to ART, the minister said “genomic sequencing will be carried out from samples of any positive cases detected via RT-PCR swab testing”.
He said that there may soon be plans to invite ART positive cases to carry out PCR swab tests for surveillance.
With regards to a recent announcement on Omicron being the dominant variant in the sequencing samples (at 87.9 per cent), Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohd Isham said the numbers were corralled from January to May, with the remaining percentage being the Delta variant.
“The Delta variant was detected mostly at the beginning of the year. Since February, the variant detected in the sequencing has been Omicron,” he said.
Meanwhile, 367 new cases were detected yesterday, bringing the national tally of confirmed cases to 149,337. Of this, 366 were detected through ART, while one of the 256 RT-PCR laboratory tests conducted over the past 24 hours, returned positive.
Two cases are in Category 4, under close monitoring and receiving respiratory assistance.
Additionally, 220 cases have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 147,284.
The number of active cases stands at 1,830, six of whom are receiving treatment at hospital, while the rest are undergoing home self-isolation.
Meanwhile, 142 first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered to children between ages five and 11 on Wednesday, bumping up the total to 34,897 doses or 81.3 per cent for children in the age bracket. Additionally, 860 second doses of the vaccine had been administered to children in the same age group, bringing the total to 21,806 doses or 50.8 per cent.
The coverage rate for the populace who have received three doses of the vaccine stands at 70.8 per cent
With the number of daily COVID-19 cases remaining at a stable level, the MoH officially shuttered the COVID Holding Area Tutong (CHAT) on June 2, 2022.
