HEALTH Minister Khairy Jamaluddin should work towards bringing down the number of dead-on-arrival (DOA) fatalities to single digits by the end of his first 100 days in office after a record high of 107 such deaths yesterday, Lim Kit Siang said.

“Khairy had promised to be transparent and to provide more detailed Covid-19 data to the public,” the DAP veteran said in a statement.

“He can start by giving a state-by-state breakdown of the daily brought-in-dead Covid-19 cases and to target the reduction of such cases to daily single-digit figures by the end of his first 100 days as the new health minister.

“This is the fourth day that Malaysia has recorded triple-digit figures for brought-in-dead and this trend should be stopped immediately.”

He said Khairy should hold urgent meetings with public and private health experts over the high Covid-19 death rates, especially on DOA cases.

The Iskandar Puteri MP also sounded alarm bells that Malaysia was on the wrong track in its war against Covid-19 as a week after the new government came to power, the new cases have surpassed Indonesia based on population size, while the daily death toll was more than India’s.

“Why are we doing so poorly in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic, even losing out to Indonesia and India,” Lim said.

Citing data from “Our World in Data”, Lim said on September 4, the total Covid-19 cases per million population for Indonesia was 14,921.08, India was 23,674.79 and Malaysia was 55,663.54.

“The daily Covid-19 cases per million population were: Indonesia 24.34, India 30.69 and Malaysia 581.43,” he said.

“Data for Covid-19 deaths per million population are no better.

“For total Covid-19 deaths per million population, the data are Indonesia 490.19, India 316.15 and Malaysia 545.61. For daily Covid-19 deaths per million population, the data are Indonesia 1.95; India 0.22 and Malaysia 11.04.

“Indonesia has more than eight times the population of Malaysia, yet for 19 consecutive days, Malaysia was having more daily Covid-19 cases than Indonesia. Yesterday, we had 20,396 Covid-19 cases and Indonesia had 5,403 cases – about a quarter of that of Malaysia,” he said.

What is completely unacceptable is that we are also losing out to India in daily Covid-19 deaths. India has over 42 times population of Malaysia, yet for the second day, there are more daily Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia than in India,” he added.

Malaysia yesterday reported 336 Covid-19 deaths while India reported 218 Covid-19 deaths. The day before, the daily death toll was 363 in Malaysia while 120 people died of Covid-19 in India.

Yesterday, the country reported 20,573 recoveries, 20,396 new infections and 336 deaths. Active caseload, on the other hand, stood at 255,789. – September 6, 2021.