THE Health Ministry (MOH) is emphasising the number of actual Covid-19 deaths in a day rather than the total number of reported deaths, officials said today. 

As such, yesterday’s reported tally of 592 only included 100 actual deaths (occurring yesterday itself), while the remaining 492 were backlog cases.

MOH has a new method of reporting the number of deaths in the country, available on the newly launched COVIDNOW website.

The ministry’s head of data for the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre Dr Maheshwara Rao Appannan said the website will show two indicators on Covid-19 deaths, namely the number of reported deaths and actual deaths for a given day. 

“Reported deaths are based on the day the cases were announced to the public. So far, this is the data MOH has been reporting.

“Actual deaths are based on the true date of death,” he said in a media briefing on interpreting the data on the new website.

The backlogged figures were unreported prior, and will be added to the dates the deaths occurred. 

The information will be reflected in the website as it is updated, which means daily death figures for earlier days in retrospect can change.

“The website and data are dynamic,” Maheshwara said.

The 592 figure reported yesterday is Malaysia’s highest record of Covid-19 deaths in a single day, if the difference between actual and reported deaths is not taken into account.

MOH officials at the online briefing today also repeatedly said that by focusing on the number of “actual deaths” daily, the trend actually showed that Covid-19 fatalities are on a downward trend. This is reflected in the graphs on the website.

Maheswara also said that Malaysia reports the deaths as “due to Covid-19” rather than “with Covid-19”.

Explaining the difference, he said that “due to Covid” means clinical investigations have found that the person died because of the coronavirus, while death “with Covid” means a patient was tested positive for Covid-19 at the time of death or a short period before. 

“We focus on deaths ‘due to Covid’ because it is important to have the correct number for analysis of vaccine effectiveness, case fatality rate, among others.

“However, this takes time, because it requires autopsy and clinical audit rather than just checking if the patient is Covid-positive,” he said, adding that this also explains why there was a backlog of death figures. 

Maheshwara said the reason for the backlog was due to frontliners being overwhelmed with work in the past couple of months, which caused delays in investigation of the cases, and therefore reporting. 

“Back in July and August, our frontliners were really overwhelmed, especially in the Klang Valley. This caused some delays in investigation (death audits) and therefore reporting.

“This means that some deaths that happened weeks ago have only concluded investigation, audit, and (are now being) reported,” he said.

MOH officials during the briefing today said this was being done to ensure transparency and present accessible granular data on Covid-19 to the public.

“In an effort to ensure transparent reporting, MOH is currently in the process of clearing the outstanding data and daily case data is expected to be higher in a few days. 

“The MOH, among others, will update the death and discharge data according to the actual date of death and discharge compared to the previous reporting date,” an official said. – September 12, 2021.