COVID-19 cases expected to continue rising - Health Deputy DG

He said currently, the rising new cases in the country were due to new variants such as the Delta variant.

"Taking the example of the high vaccination rate in the Federal Territory of Labuan and Sarawak has shown new cases are dropping but over here (Labuan and Sarawak), admission into intensive care units (ICU) and the death rate have shown a drastic fall.

"So if we could do the same thing in the Peninsula, more so at the hotspots which are experiencing rising transmissions especially in the Klang Valley with higher vaccination rate, we will see a drop in cases.

"The decline in cases may take sometime but more importantly we want to see a decrease in terms of serious patients admission into wards and those who died," he said in a special media conference here today.

Also present were Health Ministry (MOH) secretary-general Datuk Mohd Shafiq Abdullah, Health deputy director-general (Public Health ) cum Greater Klang Valley Special Task Force commander Datuk Dr Chong Chee Kheong and Selangor Health director Datuk Dr Sha'ari Ngadiman.

He said as at July 22, MOH had detected 409 cases of variants of concern (VOC) related to COVID-19 virus in Malaysia which was 189 cases for Delta variant, 206 cases for Beta variant and 14 cases for Alpha variant.

"This month, we expect the number of genome sequencing to increase as we have established a consortium of seven laboratories in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and at universities.

"It will increase another 1,000 genome sequencing a month and thus we will be able to have more detailed information on the distribution of variants in our country," he said.