COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported a total of 16 new Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Jan 25), bringing the cumulative death toll to 31,918.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 18.8 percent or 3 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 967 deaths per 1 million population, and fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan – all in the Middle East.

Selangor recorded the highest number of new deaths at 6, making up 37.5 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Sabah (3), Johor (2), Perak (2), Kuala Lumpur (2) and Pahang (1).

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

A total of 14 out of the 16 reported deaths or 87.5 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 19 Covid-19 deaths was reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of 14, indicating a downward trend.

To date, 720 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 1,174 Covid-19 deaths were reported in December 2021, 1,612 in November 2021, 2,704 in October 2021 and 9,678 in September 2021.

As of yesterday, there were 45,699 active Covid-19 cases. This is an increase of 12.1 percent from the 40,761 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has increased by 2 percent from 44,815.

School clusters

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

From the 4,066 new cases yesterday, a total of 530 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 452 (85.3 percent) were from education institutions while 71 (13.4 percent) were from workplaces.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to religious events (4 - 0.8 percent) and community transmissions (3 - 0.6 percent).