MALAYSIA reported 388 Covid-related daily deaths as of midnight yesterday, bringing the death toll in the country to 22,743, the Health Ministry said. 

Sixty-four of the cases were pronounced dead on arrival. 

According to data published by the ministry on its CovidNow website, nine deaths occurred on September 17 and the rest were backlog cases that were previously unreported. 

The remaining 379 backlog deaths were undated and would be backtraced for the date the victims were pronounced dead.

 The ministry had said that the backlogged reports were due to health frontliners being overwhelmed with work in the past couple of months, which had led to delays in investigation and reporting of deaths. 

Daily death figures could vary from the actual number of deaths that occurred in a day while the backlog was being cleared, said the ministry.

To ease understanding, the ministry is using three indicators to report Covid-19 deaths: Total daily reported deaths including backlog cases, deaths that actually took place on the day, and the seven-day average.

The seven-day average for coronavirus deaths yesterday was 108.

Of the deaths reported yesterday, Selangor accounted for 167 of them, followed by Johor (76) and Kedah (48).

Penang logged 24 deaths, Sabah (22), Pahang and Kuala Lumpur (12 each), Kelantan (10), Perak (7), Terengganu (5), Perlis and Sarawak (2 each), and Negri Sembilan (1).

No fatalities related to the coronavirus were reported in Malacca, Labuan and Putrajaya. 

Going by the new method of calculation, deaths have dropped significantly in Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Malacca, Penang, Perak, Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor, and Kuala Lumpur. 

Malaysia reported 22,970 recoveries against 17,577 new infections, effectively lowering the number of active cases in the country to 221,339. – September 18, 2021.