The declining number of positive COVID-19 cases will allow Health Ministry (MOH) health workers to focus on its joint research on COVID-19-related genomics with the Institute for Medical Research (IMR), said Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“I believe perhaps our country already has all three strains (of COVID-19), namely the A, B and C strains, because of Malaysians returning from various countries.

“But we must carry out research so that we can prove that these strains (already exist) and also whether they have mutated or not,” he said at the daily press conference on COVID-19 today.

Previously, Dr Noor Hisham was reported to have said that most positive cases detected during the first wave and early part of the second wave were from the B strain, which is similar to the one found in Wuhan, China.

-- BERNAMA