KUALA LUMPUR: The backlog in Covid-19 death reports, including in highly vaccinated areas is linked to human resources constraints in reporting real-time data when the country's healthcare system was overwhelmed with increased hospitalisation rates.
Health Ministry Disease Control division senior principal assistant director-general Dr Maheshwara Rao Appannan said there had been delays in investigating the deaths on the ground, therefore in reporting the cases to the ministry.
This, he said explains the backlog in Covid-19 fatalities, which makes up the bulk of reported daily deaths.
On Saturday, 592 new deaths were reported to the health ministry, but Dr Maheshwara said only 100 cases were "actual deaths", while the remaining were backlogged data.
"Back in July/August, our frontliners were really overwhelmed, especially in the Klang Valley. This caused some delays in investigation, and therefore reporting.
"This means that some deaths which happened weeks ago are only concluding investigation, audit, and reporting now," he shared on Twitter.
Referring to the CovidNow portal, Dr Maheshwara, who is also the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre head of data said reported deaths are based on the day the case was announced to the public.
So far, this is the data the health ministry has been reporting, he said, adding that actual deaths are based on the true date of death.
"In Malaysia, we report deaths 'due to' Covid, rather than deaths 'with' Covid.
"Due to Covid means clinical investigation has found that cause of death (CoD) was Covid.
"Death 'with' Covid means the patient was Covid+ at time of death (or a short period before).
"We focus on deaths 'due to' Covid because it is important to have the correct number for analysis of vaccine effectiveness and case fatality rate.
"However, this takes time, because it requires autopsy and clinical audit (rather than just checking if the patient is Covid+)."
The health ministry, he said decided to report on backlogged data to the Malaysian public to ensure transparency about the death numbers.
"But, it is also vital for us to have a proper picture of the trend - in Klang Valley, deaths are clearly going down, not up (as expected with high vaccination percentage).
"Therefore, the health ministry made a decision to be transparent about both numbers. We are being very clear how many were reported.
"However, we are also categorising the reported cases according to the true date of death, so the rakyat and policymakers can get a proper picture."
He added that all the data is made transparent on Github, at the national and state levels at https://github.com/MoH-Malaysia/covid19-public/blob/main/epidemic/deaths...
"We provide numbers according to reported and actual date of death, both for overall and for BID (brought in dead) specifically.
"In addition, as the health minister Khairy Jamaluddin and director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah have announced on Thursday, Malaysia even makes our death linelist public. We are one of the few countries that do this."
The linelist can be accessed at https://github.com/MoH-Malaysia/covid19-public/blob/main/epidemic/lineli...