COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported a total of nine new Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Feb 7), bringing the cumulative death toll to 32,043.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 22.2 percent or two died before they could receive treatment at a hospital.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 970 deaths per 1 million population, and fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan – all in the Middle East.

The reported deaths were in Perak (4), Kedah (1), Malacca (1), Pahang (1), Penang (1) and Selangor (1).

No new deaths were reported in Johor, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Perlis, Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu, Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya.

An average of 13 Covid-19 deaths was reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of nine, indicating a downward trend.

Spike in infections

As of yesterday, there were 74,561 active Covid-19 cases. This is an increase of 36.1 percent from the 54,777 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has increased by 87.5 percent from 39,776.

From the 11,034 new cases yesterday, a total of 276 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 161 (58.3 percent) were from education institutions while 94 (34.1 percent) were from workplaces.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to community transmissions (15 - 5.4 percent), high-risk groups such as old folks homes (4 - 1.4 percent), religious events (1 - 0.4 percent) and detention centres (1 - 0.4 percent).