Covid-19 deaths (Jan 18): 16 reported fatalities, total at 31,808

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported a total of 16 new Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Jan 17), bringing the cumulative death toll to 31,808.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 12.5 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 964 deaths per 1 million population, and fourth-worst in Asia. 

Selangor recorded the highest number of new deaths at five, making up 31.2 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Terengganu (3), Negeri Sembilan (2), Penang (2), Johor (1), Kedah (1), Kelantan (1) and Sabah (1).

No new deaths were reported in Malacca, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, Sarawak, Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya.

A total of 15 out of the 16 reported deaths or 93.8 percent happened in the last seven days.

An average of 25 Covid-19 deaths was reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of 16, indicating a downtrend.

To date, 610 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 1,174 such deaths were reported in December last year, 1,612 in November, 2,704 in October and 9,678 in September.

As of yesterday, there were 40,619 active Covid-19 cases. This is an increase of 2.2 percent from the 39,742 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has fallen by 24.9 percent from 54,096.

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

From the 2,342 new cases on Monday, 199 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 151 (75.9 percent) were from education institutions while 20 (10.1 percent) were imported.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to workplaces (13 - 6.5 percent), high-risk groups such as old folks homes (11 - 5.5 percent) and community transmissions (4 - 2.0 percent).

The Health Ministry uploads the latest details of the Covid-19 pandemic after midnight on Github as part of its open data initiative.