THE Ministry of Health has reported another 376 Covid-19 deaths as of midnight yesterday, taking the nationwide toll to 23,443.

According to the ministry’s Covidnow website, 75 of the deaths logged were declared dead on arrival. 

Meanwhile, only seven people died yesterday, the remaining being backlog cases that were previously unreported. 

The 369 backlog deaths are not dated and would be backtracked to actual date the victims were pronounced dead.

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

Due to the this, daily reports could vary from the actual number of deaths that occurred in a day while the backlog was being cleared.

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 110.

By region, there were 148 deaths in Selangor, followed by 43 in Johor, 35 in Sabah, 32 in Kelantan, 29 in Penang, 25 in Kedah, 23 in Sarawak, 14 in Kuala Lumpur, eight in Perak, seven in Terengganu, six in Pahang, four in Negri Sembilan and two in Malacca.

No deaths were reported in Perlis, Labuan or Putrajaya. 

Based on a seven-day average, deaths have dropped significantly in all states but Johor.

Yesterday, Malaysia reported 23,469 recoveries against 15,954 new infections, effectively lowering the number of active cases in the country to 210,468. – September 20, 2021.