Early tests mean Covid-19 patients detected at 'more infectious' phase - DG

COVID-19 | Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said swift action to detect Covid-19 cases may have led to patients being detected at an earlier, highly infectious phase of the disease.

However, he does not rule out the possibility that the high level of infectivity may be due to the virus’ D614G mutation.

He said this in response to a question from the media asking why patients’ samples from the current third wave have a lower cycle threshold value (C_t) when tested, compared to samples from the first two waves of the outbreak in Malaysia.

“If you look at the cases in Sabah, the C_t value detected may be because we have conducted screening quickly. If we do it quickly, we are detecting cases at its beginning compared to the first and second waves where the C_t value corresponds to a later stage of the infection...