In a statement, he said all 11 of the patients were imported cases, having flown into the country from the United States (3), United Kingdom 3), Nigeria (2), Saudi Arabia (2) and Australia (1).

Five of them are under home quarantine while the other six have been isolated at a quarantine centre.

This brings the total number of Omicron cases detected in Malaysia to 13.

He added that these 11 involved the 18 patients that health minister Khairy Jamaluddin had previously said the ministry was observing.

The ministry failed to confirm if the other seven had Omicron as it could not conduct genome sequencing due to low viral loads.

Noor Hisham said nine of the patients were Malaysians and two were Nigerians, while eight of them had light symptoms and the remaining three did not experience any.

“All 11 cases are being further investigated to determine the source of infection and their close contacts,” he said.

The ministry has also detected 13 more possible Omicron cases, and is awaiting results of further tests on them.

He also said the ministry has detected 222 cases involving variants from Dec 11 to Dec 17, including the 11 Omicron and 211 Delta cases.

A total of 5,213 variant cases have been detected here, he added

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