KHAIRY Jamaluddin must explain how long it will take for the Health Ministry to clear the backlog of Covid-19 death cases, Lim Kit Siang said today.

The Iskandar Puteri MP said this as the ministry reported 487 new deaths from Covid-19 as at midnight, of which 480 deaths were backlogs.

In the past week, the ministry has reported substantially more backlog deaths per day compared to the actual daily death toll.

“Have we cleared the backlog of deaths in the public hospitals and, if not, when will the backlog of corpses be cleared?” said the DAP veteran.

Backlog reports of deaths are deaths that had just been confirmed by the health authorities to be due to Covid-19.

Lim also said Khairy must explain why Malaysia had the worst Covid-19 death figures as well as the worst dead-on-arrival (DOA) death figures yesterday since he was sworn in as the new health minister on August 30.

Yesterday, from the reported 487 Covid-19 deaths, 161 were DOA cases.

With the fresh fatalities, the Covid-19 death toll now stood at 24,565, of which 4,809 were DOA deaths.

“From seeing light at the end of the tunnel with Khairy’s appointment as the new health minister, the light appears to have disappeared,” said Lim.

Lim said that Malaysia had topped the world list, coming in first in the “Death in the last seven days per 1 million population” category.

“Apart from mini-states and island nations, Malaysia is indisputably top of the world in daily Covid-19 deaths per million – a dubious distinction which Malaysians do not want.

“Malaysia is losing out badly to Indonesia, which has more than eight times’ Malaysia’s population, in the war against… Covid-19,” he added.

Lim added that Malaysia’s positivity rate was very bad as well.

“It has been more than 10% since late August and, on September 17, it was as high as 14.8%, way above the 5% recommended by WHO.

“Khairy cannot continue to avoid (explaining) this subject,” he said. – September 23, 2021.