Covid-19: Death toll almost 26,000 with 240 newly reported fatalities

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s Covid-19 death toll drew closer to the 26,000 mark as the Health Ministry reported another 240 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday (Sept 28).

With that, a total of 25,935 people in Malaysia have succumbed to Covid-19 since the pandemic began in January last year.

Based on the ministry’s Github data repository, five out of the 240 deaths actually occurred on Tuesday.

The rest are backlogged cases in July (five deaths), August (41) and September (189) which could not be confirmed previously.

Of the reported deaths on Tuesday, 71 were fatalities classified as “brought-in-dead” (BID) cases.

This brings the total of BID cases in the country up to 5,168.

Out of the 240 reported deaths on Tuesday, 62 of them were Klang Valley cases.

The rest were in Johor (47), Selangor (41), Sabah (38), Kedah (20), Penang (18), Sarawak (15), Kelantan (14), Terengganu (seven), Perak (10), Melaka (four), Pahang (four) and Perlis (one).

Negri Sembilan, Labuan and Putrajaya reported zero death cases.

Based on the latest graphs on the ministry’s CovidNow website, the country’s death cases are still on a declining trend.

The average number of deaths in the last seven days - based on actual date of death - is 89.

This continues the steady decline from early August, when the average was around 300 death cases a day.

On Tuesday, Malaysia reported 11,309 new Covid-19 cases and 14,160 recoveries.

Active Covid-19 cases went down to 174,492 - a reduction of over 3,000 cases from the previous day.

Of the total active cases, 144,631 or 82.9% are patients with mild infections and are undergoing home quarantine.

Another 19,598 (11.2%) are those under isolation at low-risk quarantine centres (PKRC), while 9,278 (5.3%) are hospitalised.

The number of patients in intensive care units (ICU) is now 985 (0.5%), with 563 (0.3%) on ventilator support.

The national ICU utilisation rate is currently at 69.2%.

The Klang Valley’s ICU rate is at 71.8%.