Covid-19 deaths (Nov 20): 45 reported fatalities, total nears 30,000

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry's Github data repository reported a total of 45 Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Nov 19), bringing the cumulative death toll to 29,937.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 909 deaths per 1 million population, and fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan – all in the Middle East.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 15.6 percent or 7 died before they could receive treatment at a hospital.

Sabah recorded the highest number of new deaths at 15, making up 33.3 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Selangor (7), Kedah (5), Kelantan (4), Sarawak (4), Penang (3), Negeri Sembilan (2), Pahang (2), Malacca (1), Perlis (1) and Kuala Lumpur (1).

No new deaths were reported in Johor, Perak, Terengganu, Labuan and Putrajaya.

A total of 42 out of the 45 reported deaths or 93.3 percent happened in the last seven days.

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

An average of 60 Covid-19 deaths were reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of 52, indicating a downward trend.

To date, 1,122 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 2,704 Covid-19 deaths were reported in October, 9,680 in September, 7,642 in August and 3,858 in July.

As of yesterday, there were 68,637 active Covid-19 cases. This is an increase of 6.8 percent from the 64,277 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has fallen by 17.5 percent from 83,223.

Cluster-linked infections

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

From the 6,355 new cases yesterday, a total of 168 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 103 (61.3 percent) were from workplaces while 40 (23.8 percent) were from education institutions.

Another 18 (10.7 percent) were from clusters linked to community transmissions.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to and high-risk groups such as old folks homes (7 - 4.2 percent).