THE Health Ministry reported another 240 Covid-19 deaths as of midnight yesterday, taking the number of fatalities from the epidemic to 25,935.

According to the ministry’s GitHub data repository, 71 cases were dead on arrival (DOA).

Meanwhile, only five of the 240 deaths took place yesterday.

The remaining 235 were backlog cases that were previously unreported. These would be backtracked to the days the deaths actually took place.

The daily death figure is the sum total of the deaths that occur on the day plus backlog reports of deaths, or deaths that have just been confirmed by the health authorities to be due to Covid-19 upon completion of investigation.

Because of this, daily death numbers could vary from the actual number of deaths that have occurred on the day of the report while the backlog is being cleared.

The data also showed that four of the 240 victims had vaccination history, where two were partially vaccinated and the other two fully vaccinated.

The two partially vaccinated death cases were reported in Johor. Kelantan and Pahang recorded one fully vaccinated death each.

Johor reported the most deaths with 47. Five of the deaths were DOA cases.

Selangor was second on the list with 41 deaths, where 24 of them were DOA cases.

Other states and territories that reported new deaths are Sabah with 38, Kuala Lumpur (21), Kedah (20), Penang (18), Sarawak (15), Kelantan (14), Perak (10), Terengganu (7), Pahang and Malacca (4 each) and Perlis (1).

Negri Sembilan, Labuan and Putrajaya did not record any coronavirus-related deaths.

Besides the DOA cases in Johor and Selangor, Sabah had 14, Kuala Lumpur (12), Kelantan (7), Kedah (5), Perak, Perlis, Penang and Sarawak (1 each).

According to the ministry’s CovidNow website, the national average deaths per 100,000 population was 5.6. Penang has the highest with 14.0 deaths per population of 100,000.

The seven-day average for deaths was 89 cases.

The active Covid-19 caseload in the country dropped to 174,492 after Malaysia reported 14,160 recoveries against 11,332 new cases.

On the breakdown of the active cases, 144,631 patients or 82.9% are under home quarantine, 19,598 (11.2%) at low-risk quarantine centres and 9,278 (5.3%) in hospitals.

Of those admitted in hospitals, 985 are in intensive care units, with 563 on ventilator support. – September 29, 2021.