The number of Covid-19 sequences found to be of the highly contagious Delta variant has nearly doubled in the span of a week.

Since the variant was first identified in India up to June 22, Malaysia had detected 22 cases of the Delta variant through genetic sequencing. These comprised 13 local and nine imported cases.

In the one-week period after that, up to June 30, 18 more cases have been detected, all of which are local cases. This brings the total to 40 cases, of which 31 are local.

The new cases were detected in...