Deaths reported daily not all from past 24 hours, says Khairy

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today said the high number of Covid-19 deaths reported each day does not necessarily reflect the actual death rate due to backlogs in data collection.

Speaking at a press conference, he said most of the backlog was due to the long clinical procedures which require investigation and verification of deaths before they are included in the Covid-19 statistics.

“If we look at Selangor, reports show that deaths are still going up, but the actual number of deaths on that particular day might actually be going down,” he said, adding that improvements would be made to better streamline procedures.

“Previously, the reporting process would require us to wait until after the autopsy and the process of data collection to confirm the cause of death.

“This would take several days. Now, we will take the actual date of death for our statistics, and then we will do the post-mortems according to clinical procedure.”

He said in the event of changes, clarification would be made and the data amended.

“With this new procedure, we can announce the death cases according to the actual date of death.”