KUALA LUMPUR – DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang is questioning the Health Ministry (MoH) over an apparent discrepancy between its official Covid-19 daily death count for yesterday, which is far lower than the figure given by global statistics website Worldometer in its “Coronavirus” section.
He said that, while MoH’s website CovidNow stated there were 42 fatalities, including 10 brought-in-dead (BID) cases, bringing the cumulative total deaths from the virus to 28,354, Worldometer gave the number as 222, bringing the cumulative total to 28,534 deaths.
The Iskandar Puteri MP called on Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin to clarify the matter.
“If the CovidNow website is right, then we have the lowest number of daily reported deaths in more than five months as on May 13, we recorded 38 Covid-19 deaths,” he said in a statement today.
“If the Worldometer website is right about 222 Covid-19 deaths yesterday, Khairy must call for a total revamp of the anti-Covid policy and strategy.”
Worldometer is run by an international team of developers, researchers and volunteers, with the goal of making world statistics available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format to a wide audience around the globe. It says it is independent and self-financed.
If Worldometer is correct, Lim said such high Covid-19 deaths in the eighth week of Khairy’s tenure as health minister means that the country is adopting the wrong policy and strategy.
He added that Malaysia must strive to cease to be the “worst-performing state in Asean”. He said this would not be an easy feat as, compared with Malaysia, Indonesia only recorded 802 new Covid-19 cases and 23 deaths yesterday.
“This is also the time to ask when the daily new Covid-19 cases will fall to triple-digit figures and the daily Covid-19 deaths fall to single-digit numbers – on Khairy’s first 100 days on December 7, before December 31, 2021 or sometime in 2022?
“There is considerable concern among Malaysians about the Covid-19 pandemic, not only because of the opening up of the economy and the upcoming general election in Melaka.”
Lim stressed there is a need for greater clarity as to what “living with Covid” means and that the government should communicate more effectively with the people in this area. – The Vibes, October 24, 2021
