THE two main Covid-19 variants found to be spreading rapidly in China – BA.5.2 and BF.7 – which account for almost 80% of the variants found in the country currently, have been detected in Malaysia.

Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said as at December 31, there were 4,148 cases infected with BA.5.2 and three cases infected with BF.7 in the country.

However, he clarified that there was no data linking serious cases or deaths to the BA.5.2 and BF.7 variants.

“Both variants are listed as sub-lineage of Omicron BA.5 and have not been classified as Lineage Under Monitoring (LUM) by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“However, both the BA.5.2 and BF.7 variants are believed to cause reinfection among patients or result in greater infectivity due to the high number of cases in China,” he said in a statement today.

According to Noor Hisham, the situation will be monitored from time to time and when there are drastic changes that require strategic measures to be executed to safeguard public health, they will be announced immediately by the WHO to all countries.

The BF.7 variant which is an abbreviation for BA.5.2.1.7, originated from the Omicron BA.5 variant and was diagnosed in the world for the first time in July 2022.

Meanwhile, the health director-general said genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Malaysia throughout December 2022 showed that the XBB variant was dominant in the spread of the coronavirus in the country.

The XBB variant comprised 55.4% of the samples, followed by the BA.2.75 variant (20.8%) and BQ.1 variant (10.8%).

“This shows that the XBB variant is the main variant that is spreading among Malaysians since October 2022. Both the XBB and BA.2.75 have been categorised as LUM,” he said. – Bernama, January 2, 2023.