MOH explains discrepancy in Covid-19 death by ethnicity data

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has clarified why two written replies in Parliament about Covid-19 deaths by ethnicity show significantly different data for the same period.

The MOH's Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre's Head of Data Dr Mahesh Appannan said figures for Malay, Chinese and Indian deaths differed widely between the replies because of verification processes.

Initially, a written reply to Ong Kian Ming (DAP-Bangi) noted that from Jan 1 to Oct 3 this year, 8,886 Covid-19 deaths among Malaysians were from the Malay community, 2,815 ethnic Chinese, 1,746 ethnic Indian while 12,765 were other ethnicities.

However, an updated reply on Oct 12, which fixed a mistake earlier made on non-Malaysian deaths, showed significantly different data for these three ethnic groups.

This time, it showed that from Jan 1 to Oct 3 this year, 13,772 Malays, 4,753 ethnic Chinese and 2,502 ethnic Indians died of Covid-19.

This is an increase of 35 percent for Malays, 69 percent for ethnic Chinese and 43 percent for ethnic Indians, compared to the first reply.

'Others' category

Asked about this, Mahahesh said this discrepancy happened because when the first reply was made, CPRC was still verifying those in the "others" category.

By the time the updated reply was made, the ethnicities and citizenship of those in the "others" category had been verified and they were added to the relevant categories.

"At the time of the first answer, we were conducting verification of nationality for many in the 'others' category - to check if they had active identity card numbers.

"When done, we broke down to local ethnic or non-citizens in the second answer.

"We should have caveated this in the first answer. Our apologies," he said on Twitter.

The initial written reply on deaths by ethnicity also raised eyebrows, because MOH had lumped together Malaysians, who were not Malay, ethnic Chinese or ethnic Indian, with non-Malaysians in the "others" (lain-lain) category.

Data integrity

Queries on the matter prompted the MOH to issue an updated reply on Oct 12, which differentiated between Malay, ethnic Chinese, ethinc Indian Sabah bumiputera, Sarawak bumiputera, other Malaysians and non-Malaysians.

The discrepancy between data for Malay, ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian was also raised by consultant pediatrician Dr Amar Singh.

"Data integrity is critical if we are to understand the risks and social responses for mitigation," he said.

Bangi MP Ong added that he hopes questions raised on the processes of Covid-19 data reporting could further lead to substantive debates on data analysis.

Before this, MOH had released age, gender, location of deaths and their comorbidities, but did not reveal the ethnicity of the deceased.

To date, 27,681 people have died of Covid-19 in Malaysia since the pandemic hit Malaysian shores in January 2020.

Of this, 20 percent were brought in dead. - Mkini