Citing global data, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said BA.5 was shown to be more contagious than others before it and has become the dominant variant in several countries. — Malay Mail photo
KUALA LUMPUR (July 8): Malaysia has detected the Omicron BA.5 variant of Covid-19 locally and will likely see infections rise as a result, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.
Citing global data, he said BA.5 was shown to be more contagious than others before it and has become the dominant variant in several countries.
“If we look at other countries’ epidemiology, the BA.5 variant is the main sub-lineage which caused the rise in cases,” he told a press conference at the Parliament building here today.
According to Khairy, BA.5 was especially worrying as it was the most contagious Covid-19 variant to date and because previous infections did not appear to confer any protection against it.
“The BA.5 has an immune escape property and if you have already been infected by the initial Omicron variants BA.1 and BA2, you can be infected again by the BA.5 variant,” he said, indicating that this situation has also caused the increase in hospital admittance in countries like Portugal and Singapore. — Malay Mail
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