Covid-19 deaths (Dec 16): 33 reported fatalities, total at 30,989

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported a total of 33 new Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Dec 15), bringing the cumulative death toll to 30,989.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 939 deaths per 1 million population.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 12.1 percent or 4 died before they could receive treatment at a hospital.

Terengganu recorded the highest number of new deaths at 7, making up 21.2 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Kelantan (5), Selangor (5), Perak (4), Kuala Lumpur (4), Johor (3), Kedah (3) and Pahang (2).

No new deaths were reported in Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Perlis, Penang, Sabah, Sarawak, Labuan and Putrajaya.

A total of 27 out of the 33 reported deaths or 81.8 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 42 Covid-19 deaths was reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of 35, indicating a downward trend.

To date, 675 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 1,612 Covid-19 deaths were reported in November, 2,704 in October, 9,678 in September and 7,642 in August.

As of yesterday, there were 56,989 active Covid-19 cases. This is a reduction of 6.4 percent from the 60,878 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has fallen by 13.6 percent from 65,958.

Workplaces and educational institutions

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

From the 3,900 new cases yesterday, a total of 137 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 62 (45.3 percent) were from workplaces while 49 (35.8 percent) were from education institutions.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to high-risk groups such as old folks homes (17 - 12.4 percent), community transmissions (8 - 5.8 percent) and detention centres (1 - 0.7 percent). - Mkini