Deadliest September: Kit Siang wants KJ to explain worsening Covid-19 fatalities
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin should explain why the country's Covid-19 deaths are worsening, Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang said.
This was as the country recorded another 487 Covid-19 deaths reported today pushed September's death toll to 7,910, making this month the deadliest since the start of the pandemic.
Lim pointed out that in the past week, Malaysia was one of the worst-performing countries in terms of deaths per million population...
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin should explain why the country's Covid-19 deaths are worsening, Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang said.
This was as the country recorded another 487 Covid-19 deaths reported today pushed September's death toll to 7,910, making this month the deadliest since the start of the pandemic.
Lim pointed out that in the past week, Malaysia was one of the worst-performing countries in terms of deaths per million population.
"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," he said.
According to wordofmeters, a portal tracking the pandemic, Malaysia recorded 76 deaths per million population in the last week, the 12th highest in the world.
However, all other countries that surpassed Malaysia are small nations with a population that is around 12 percent of Malaysia’s, or less. Malaysia has an estimated population of 32 million.
The countries surpassing Malaysia include Georgia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Suriname, making Malaysia the worst-performing country in the world for its size in terms of deaths in the last week.
"Khairy cannot continue to avoid this subject.
"Have we cleared the backlog of deaths in the public hospitals, and if not, when will the backlog of corpses be cleared?" Lim asked.
The government has said many of the deaths being reported recently are backlogs from when the pandemic was at its peak.
As a result, the numbers of Covid-19 fatalities are still showing an uptrend.
In terms of active cases, it has declined by 22.8 percent to 201,274 compared to 30 days ago.
However, Lim said the country's positivity rate - the rate at which people are turning up positive for Covid-19 based on the number of tests, is still bad.
"Malaysia’s positivity rate is very bad. It has been more than 10 percent since late August and on Sept 17, it was as high as 14.8 percent, way above the five percent recommended by the World Health Organisation," he said.
He added that Malaysia was also losing out to neighbouring Indonesia which is significantly more populous with more than 270 million people.
"For the last three weeks, daily new Covid-19 cases in Indonesia have been below 10,000 cases and in four-digit numbers while in Malaysia, we have not been able to go below 14,000 cases for the past two months and have been in five-digit numbers for over two months.
"Yesterday, for instance, Indonesia reported 2,720 new Covid-19 cases while Malaysia reported 14,990 new cases.
"Indonesia has also improved significantly its positivity rate, from 9.3 percent on Sept1 to 3.7 percent on Sept 13," he said.
With 7,910 deaths reported for the first 22 days of this month, the country risks hitting 10,000 deaths by the end of the month.
In contrast, the country recorded 7,642 deaths in August, 3,858 deaths in July, 2,380 deaths in June and 1,302 deaths in May. The death toll now stands at 24,565.
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