Possible all three strains of Covid-19 already in Malaysia – Health DG
CORONAVIRUS | Different strains of the Covid-19 virus could have already been in Malaysia as the country is facing its second wave of imported cases, says the Health Ministry.
Its director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah told a press conference today that there is a possibility of this happening as many Malaysians are returning from all over the world.
CORONAVIRUS | Different strains of the Covid-19 virus could have already been in Malaysia as the country is facing its second wave of imported cases, says the Health Ministry.
Its director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah told a press conference today that there is a possibility of this happening as many Malaysians are returning from all over the world.
"We believe that as we are dealing with the second wave of imported cases, as our students or citizens are coming back from overseas not only from China but also from the US and the UK, among others.
"So maybe we have the three strains in this country. But we do not know until we do the isolation of the virus and then tag the virus, only then we can compare the strain (to identify) whether it is strain A, B and C," he said.
Noor Hisham was answering a question on reports that the virus has already mutated, and if the ministry has detected different strains of the virus here so far.
However, according to him, the ministry has yet been able to identify the strains as Covid-19 is a new virus and there is no available data they can compare with.
"This is a new virus. So basically we do not have the data and reports of the virus that we can refer to, unlike other viruses where we already have the identification and the report," he said.
Noor Hisham added that researchers would need to isolate and culture the virus first, before attempting to sequence its genetic code.
Similar work has already been done in many parts of the world, which allow the genetic code of different samples of the virus to be compared with one another to reconstruct a 'family tree' of its lineage.
This, in turn, has allowed researchers to infer how the virus has spread across the world, and how long it has been circulating within a population.
According to the website Nextstrain.com - which tracks the evolution of various pathogens including the virus that causes Covid-19 - researchers worldwide have submitted the genetic sequences of 3,944 samples of the virus to a public repository of genetic information.
Of these, only eight submissions are from samples collected in Malaysia.
According to the top MOH officer, this is one of the areas of research that the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) is working on.
"So what we are doing in the IMR is important. Number one, we are trying to isolate and culture the virus. Once cultured, then we compare (the virus)," Noor Hisham said.
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