KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 9 — Daily Covid-19 fatalities in Selangor are actually on the decline, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today, citing data discrepancies due to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) delayed death reporting.
Statewide in Selangor, although daily reported Covid-19 infections dropped 55 per cent from a high of nearly 7,500 cases on August 10 to fewer than 3,400 on September 7, based on moving averages, fatalities increased 68 per cent from 65 deaths reported on August 24 to 109 reported on September 7.
“The death data that we have been releasing every day is not the death that has taken place in the last 24 hours. If we look at these graphs, the line in red is death by date, and black is the reported death date.
“So, if we look at Selangor, the reported deaths are still going up, but the actual deaths on that particular day have been going down,” Khairy told a media briefing today. “We will improve this by changing the death reporting process.”
Khairy said the previous Covid-19 death reporting process required various checks to be conducted, including post-mortem, before the death can be verified and recorded.
“And this sometimes takes days and weeks. So, the backlog in cases especially in Klang Valley was high. That is why we’re not reflecting the actual death or the actual date of death,” he said.
“Now, we will take the actual death date, then we will do the post-mortem, and if there is anything that needs to be clarified, we will amend the data later so we can announce the death on the actual date.”
CodeBlue previously reported increased Covid-19 fatalities across all districts in Selangor in the past fortnight, except the Petaling district, which registered a drop in deaths.
From August 25 until September 7, four districts in Malaysia’s most industrialised state — Kuala Langat, Sepang, Klang, and Sabak Bernam — reported increases in Covid-19 deaths by 100 per cent or more compared to the previous two weeks from August 11 until 24.
Based on slides released by Khairy’s office, only Sarawak, Labuan, Putrajaya, and Perlis — which report the fewest coronavirus-related fatalities in Malaysia with fewer than six a day — show death reporting closely matching the actual date of death.
According to MOH’s new Covid-19 dashboard, Selangor reported the highest number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in the country in the past two weeks at 22.6 fatalities per 100,000 people, exceeding the national average of 13.3.
