KUALA LUMPUR, August 25 — Gombak and Hulu Langat districts suffered the highest Covid-19 fatalities per capita in Selangor this year, a state that as a whole recorded almost double the national mortality rate.
According to data provided by Selangor state executive councillor for public health Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud today, Covid-19 deaths in Gombak amounted to 672 cases this year as of August 10, which is equivalent to about 818.5 deaths per million population.
Hulu Langat trails behind with about 747.8 deaths per million people, as 1,029 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded over the same period.
To compare, Selangor — the country’s most populous state with a population size of 6.5 million — registered 3,996 Covid-19 fatalities from January 1 to August 10 this year, which amounts to about 611.2 deaths per million population.
Malaysia recorded 10,691 coronavirus-related deaths in that period at 327.4 fatalities per million population. Selangor comprised about 37 per cent of the country’s Covid-19 death tally and was almost double the national coronavirus mortality rate.
Covid-19 deaths per million people in Gombak (818.5) and Hulu Langat (747.8) this year as of August 10 were 2.5 times and 2.3 times the national average, as well as 1.4 times and 1.2 times the state average, respectively.
Also among the top five districts with the highest Covid-19 death incidence per million population in Selangor are Petaling (593.9), Kuala Langat (563.7), and Sepang (511.3).
Selangor remains the highest contributor to the country’s daily coronavirus cases and death count. As of yesterday, the state reported a cumulative 566,471 Covid-19 infections and 5,179 deaths, which accounts for over 35 per cent of both the country’s 1.6 million case tally and death toll of over 14,500 victims.
Selangor’s Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah on Monday attributed the Covid-19 epidemic in the state to lack of standard operating procedure (SOP) compliance, poor enforcement, and initial delays in the vaccination programme, while Dr Siti Mariah blamed the surge in large parts to the federal administration’s refusal to share data that hindered contact tracing work.
In sharing the state’s Covid-19 death rates by district in the state legislative assembly sitting today, Dr Siti Mariah noted that the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) and the Selangor state health department do not provide data on fatalities based on Covid-19 variants.
“Not all cases will undergo genome sequencing tests to determine the type of variant. Only a small number of cases will go through such tests and the test results cannot be extrapolated to the cause of death as the data are non-representative,” she said.
