MALAYSIA’S Covid-19 death toll rose to 25,437 after 278 fatalities were reported as of midnight yesterday, the Health Ministry said.

According to data from the Health Ministry’s GitHub repository, 31 victims died from the virus yesterday, while the remaining were backlog cases that were previously unreported.

The 247 backlog deaths were not dated and would be backtracked to actual date the victims were pronounced dead.

The daily death figures reported by the ministry now is the sum total of the number of deaths that occurred on the day plus backlog reports of deaths, or deaths that had just been confirmed by the health authorities upon completion of clinical investigation.

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

According to the data, 99 individuals were pronounced dead on arrival (DOA).

Data also showed that two of the 278 victims had vaccination history, where one was partially vaccinated and the other fully vaccinated. Both victims were from Kedah.

Selangor reported the most number of deaths with 113. Fifty-one of them were DOA cases.

Other states and territories reporting new deaths are Johor (32), Penang (31), Kedah (27), Sabah (22), Kuala Lumpur (12), Kelantan and Sarawak (11 each), Perak and Terengganu (5 each), Malacca and Pahang (4 each) and Negri Sembilan (1).

Perlis, Labuan and Putrajaya did not record any coronavirus-related fatalities.

Besides the 51 DOA cases in Selangor, Sabah had 15, Penang (8), Johor and Kuala Lumpur (7 each), Sarawak (5), Kelantan (2), Kedah, Pahang, Perak and Terengganu (1 each).

The national average was 5.6 deaths per population of 100,000 with Penang having the highest with 14.8 deaths per population of 100,000.

The seven-day average for deaths was 90 cases.

The active Covid-19 caseload in the country dropped to 183,289 after Malaysia reported 20,971 recoveries against 13,104 new cases.

On the breakdown of the active cases according to the CovidNow website, 152,299 patients or 83.1% are under home quarantine, 20,147 (11%) at low-risk quarantine centres and 9,793 (5.3%) in hospitals.

Of those admitted in hospitals, 1,050 are in intensive care units, with 582 on ventilator support. – September 27, 2021.