COVID-19 deaths in Malaysia rose to 23,067 with the addition of 324 new fatalities as of midnight yesterday, the Health Ministry said.

Only seven of the new deaths occurred yesterday, the remainder being backlog cases that were previously unreported.

According to the ministry’s CovidNow website, 70 of the cases were pronounced dead on arrival.

The 317 backlog deaths were undated and would be backtraced for the date the victims were pronounced dead.

The ministry had said the backlogged reports were due to health frontline workers being overwhelmed with work in the past 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.

The two indicators for the calculation of daily Covid deaths are daily reported deaths plus backlog cases and the seven-day average.

The seven-day average for Covid deaths yesterday was 109.

Selangor accounted for the most deaths yesterday at 146, followed by Johor (54) and Penang (25).

Kedah reported 24 deaths, Perak (15), Sabah (13), Kelantan (12), Sarawak (11), Kuala Lumpur and Malacca (7 each), Negri Sembilan and Pahang (5 each).

There were no coronavirus related fatalities in Perlis, Terengganu, Labuan, and Putrajaya.

Going by the new method of calculation based on a seven-day average, deaths have dropped significantly in Kedah, Kelantan, Penang, Perak, Perlis, Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu, Labuan, Putrajaya, Selangor, and Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia reported 17,205 recoveries against 15,549 new infections, effectively lowering the number of active cases in the country to 219,359. – September 19, 2021.