South African Covid Variant Raises Fears

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Travellers arriving at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.PETALING JAYA: A former deputy minister has accused the government of failing to protect Malaysians against imported cases of Covid-19.
Dr Lee Boon Chye, who was deputy health minister when Pakatan Harapan was in power, said there could well be more cases of the highly contagious South African variant than the nine so far identified in Malaysia.
Speaking to FMT, Lee said the presence of the variant in the country showed that the government had failed to guard Malaysia’s borders against imported cases of Covid-19.
He said the number of imported variants was likely to be far higher than reported because the health ministry was carrying out genomic sequencing in only a few selected cases.
Dr Lee Boon Chye“We need to perform more genomic sequencing of the virus among the confirmed Covid-19 patients to know the extent of the transmission and to better understand the chain of transmission,” he said.
He added that some vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca vaccine, were ineffective against the South African variant and others, such as the one produced by Pfizer, had limited effect.
He called for improved monitoring of the strain and improved preventive procedures at points of entry into the country.
He also said: “Effective contact tracing of every new case of Covid-19 should be done so that each case will not evolve into a huge uncontrollable cluster of infection.
“The virus can be contained if every close contact can be identified, tested and isolated within 48 hours.”
Dr Sanjay RampalDr Sanjay Rampal, an epidemiology specialist at Universiti Malaya, said mutations were bound to occur with the intensity of the global incidence of Covid-19.
He told FMT mutations were likely to spread in any country without strong border controls.
“The current quarantine guidelines in Malaysia are sufficient,” he said. “However, implementation needs to be standardised for all travellers.”
Sanjay said there was a need to adjust expectations to acknowledge that there would always be a baseline risk of Covid-19 spreads.
“In my opinion,” he said, “there has been continuous genetic characterisation of samples over time by the labs. There may be room for more data transparency.”
Recently, the health ministry identified nine Covid-19 cases associated with the South African variant, known as B.1.351. Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said all of the cases were local infections.
“The health ministry will continue to be vigilant and implement various public health measures to prevent the spread of new variants in Malaysia,” he said.
Identified last December, the B.1.351 variant quickly spread from South Africa and Britain to the US, Canada, Germany, Australia and South Korea. - FMT

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