THE daily Covid-19 death toll does not reflect the actual number of fatalities within the past 24 hours, but is a cumulative number over the course of a few days, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said.
 
Khairy said the numbers are sometimes backlogged as the authorities need time to confirm the cause of death.
 
“One thing I want to say today but I will say more on Wednesday when I reveal the new datasets for (the Health Ministry). The number of deaths we report everyday are not the number of deaths which took place in the past 24 hours,” he said.
 
“There’s a long backlog. There’s a huge backlog of deaths because we have to confirm whether the deceased died because of Covid-19.
 
“I have the actual deaths reported by date,” he told reporters at Menara Kinabalu in Sabah today.
 
He added that the death rates in Klang Valley may reduce in the next two to three weeks once the Health Ministry clears its backlog. 

Khairy added that a huge proportion of the dead-on-arrival cases involve Covid-19 patients who were not under the supervision of the Health Ministry or any healthcare facilities.
 
He said some of them did not screen for Covid-19 and it is too late for health authorities to intervene when they experience a sudden onset of severe symptoms.
 
He urged community leaders and neighbours to keep tabs on the health status of those who are ill.
 
A total of 18,219 people in Malaysia have died from Covid-19 to date. 
 
In January, anaesthetist and intensive care specialist Dr Nurilyani Bujang explained that not all fatalities involving Covid-19 are classified as deaths caused by the coronavirus, adding that procedures are in place to determine if the root cause of death is Covid-19.

Nurilyani said there are two categories of death linked to Covid-19 – the first being deaths caused by the virus itself, and the second is deaths arising from a different cause.

Deaths under the second category are not included in the official Covid-19 death toll, but are kept as an internal record by the Health Ministry. – September 6, 2021.