Malaysia’s Covid-19 deaths increased 19.5 times during Emergency period, says Kit Siang

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Workers in personal protective equipment bury the body of a Covid-19 victim in Labuan. – Bernama file photo

KUCHING (Aug 9): Malaysia’s Covid-19 deaths have increased 19.5 times during the Emergency period with the death toll at 10,749 as of yesterday, said Democratic Action Party veteran parliamentarian leader Lim Kit Siang.

The Iskandar Puteri MP said when the Emergency was proclaimed on Jan 11 to combat Covid-19, there were 551 deaths from the first 12 months of the pandemic.

“By the present rate of Covid-19 deaths, we will break the 11,000-mark for Covid-19 deaths either today or tomorrow and heading towards more than 15,000 Covid-19 deaths by the 64th Merdeka Day on Aug 31 and near 20,000 Covid-19 deaths by the 58th Malaysia Day on Sept 16 – making these two national holidays the most tragic in the nation’s history.

“The single biggest issue of the Covid-19 pandemic is the high fatality rate with 360 new Covid-19 deaths yesterday, but it was completely omitted by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in his live telecast yesterday,” he said in a statement today.

Lim said a total of 3,854 Covid-19 deaths were reported nationwide last month and in the first eight days of this month, Covid-19 deaths totalled 1,729.

“And Malaysia is likely to have more than 5,000 deaths in August alone,” he feared.

He said Malaysia had performed so badly in the war against Covid-19 that the country had jumped from the world’s top dozen countries in daily pandemic deaths to the world’s top seventh nation with 360 Covid-19 deaths yesterday.

According to him, no country with such a high Covid-19 death rate can claim to be a caring government as Malaysia is enacting hundreds of tragedies every day.

“What is of greatest concern is that there is still no light at the end of the tunnel, as between July 7 and Aug 7, the number of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) grew from 948 to 1,097 while the number of active cases skyrocketed from 74,344 to 224,120 in the same period.

“This is putting unprecedented pressure on the country’s healthcare system,” he added.

In a live telecast yesterday, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the government had approved travelling and home quarantine for fully vaccinated Malaysians and foreigners.

He added that this applied to all residents nationwide and regardless of any phase of the National Recovery Plan.