Covid-19 deaths (Oct 21): 76 reported fatalities, total at 28,138

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry's Github data repository reported a total of 76 Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Oct 20), bringing the cumulative death toll to 28,138.

Malaysia is the four worst-performing country in Asia in the number of Covid-19 deaths per capita after countries in the Middle East - Iran, Lebanon and Jordan.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 18.4 percent or 14 died before they could receive treatment at a hospital.

Sarawak recorded the highest number of new deaths at 12, making up 15.8 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Johor (11), Sabah (10), Kedah (9), Penang (8), Selangor (6), Perak (5), Pahang (4), Terengganu (4), Kelantan (3), Malacca (2), Negeri Sembilan (1) and Perlis (1).

No new deaths were reported in Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya.

A total of 61 out of the 76 reported deaths or 80.3 percent occurred in the last seven days.

The remaining deaths occurred more than a week ago, but were only recorded yesterday due to delays in data reporting.

An average of 146 Covid-19 deaths was reported daily in the last 30 days, compared to the seven-day average of 78, indicating a downtrend.

To date, 1,930 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 9,680 Covid-19 deaths were reported in September, 7,642 in August, 3,858 in July and 2,380 in June.

As of yesterday, there were 81,955 active Covid-19 cases. This is a reduction of 22.7 percent from the 106,047 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has fallen by 60.5 percent from 207,699.

The Health Ministry's post-midnight update also provided further insights into the new Covid-19 infections yesterday.

From the 5,516 new cases yesterday, a total of 206 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 143 (69.4 percent) were from workplaces while 34 (16.5 percent) were from community transmissions.

Another 19 (9.2 percent) were from clusters linked to high-risk groups, such as old folks homes.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to and education institutions (10 - 4.9 percent).

Previously, the Health Ministry released deaths statistics together with the number of new Covid-19 cases in the evening. This had since changed.

Deaths statistics are now released after midnight along with other more detailed data. Malaysiakini reports them in the morning.