[ad_1]
PETALING JAYA: A more aggressive mutation of the Covid-19 virus is believed to be the cause of the highest infection rate in patient-related cases 26, says the Ministry of Health.
Director-General for Health Datuk Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah said the Medical Research Institute (IMR) had found a mutation that could have caused the virus to become more aggressive in the case of patient 26.
“At IMR, we carry out virus isolation and we also cultivate the virus.
“For example, in the case of patient 26, we have studied the virus and found that there was a mutation.”
“It may be that this mutation has made the virus more aggressive and has spread and infected about 120 people,” he said at a daily news conference on Wednesday (April 29).
Patient 26 is the president of UDA Holdings Bhd, Datuk Hisham Hamdan, who was Shanghai in mid-January, although he denied having contracted the virus there.
He started developing symptoms on February 27, tested positive for Covid-19 on February 29, and was immediately protected at Sungai Buloh Hospital.
Dr. Hisham added that the role of the IMR was not only to test for Covid-19 but also to focus on investigating the virus and its different strains.
“We see that for the first wave of infections and the initial stages of the second wave, the virus in our cases was from strain B, which comes from Wuhan.
“This is different from strain A, which is linked to most cases in the United States, and for Europe it is strain C,” he said.
[ad_2]
