Sevenfold increase in brought-in-dead Covid-19 cases in past two months, says Health DG

PUTRAJAYA: The number of “brought-in-dead” (BID) cases has gone up sevenfold in the past two months, says the Health Ministry.

Its director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said out of the 4,856 coronavirus deaths reported this year, 670 or 13.8% were BID cases.

“In April, there were 35 BID cases. This went up seven times to 246 cases in June alone,” he said in his daily Covid-19 statement on Friday (July 2).

Dr Noor Hisham said most - or 76% - of the BID cases involved those aged between 50 and 70 years old, 64.5% of whom had one form of comorbidity.

The three states with the highest number of BID cases are Selangor at 181 cases (27%), Kuala Lumpur at 78 cases (11.6%) and Sabah at 85 cases (12.7%).

On Friday, Malaysia reported 73 Covid-19 deaths, taking the death toll up to 5,327.

Of that total, 13 were BID cases.

Selangor reported the highest number of fatalities with 29 cases, followed by Negri Sembilan with 13 cases.

Kuala Lumpur and Sabah each had five deaths while Johor, Pahang and Sarawak had four each.

Labuan has three deaths while Kelantan and Penang have two cases each. Melaka and Kedah have one death case each.

Nine of the casualties are foreign nationals.

The youngest death reported on Friday is a 24-year-old Malaysian man, who died at Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan in Kuantan. He had obesity.

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