by Dr Musa Mohd Nordin
A colleague shared an article dated 12 August 2023, which alleged that “Malaysians are dying at unprecedented rates.” The author wrote that the “excess mortality in Malaysia has risen dramatically to levels between 2-48% averaging somewhere around 20% during the period January 2022 to May 2023.” (1)
The Ministry of Health (MOH) has reported 19,099 fewer deaths for the period from March 2020 to June 2021, when compared to the pre-pandemic period of 2015 to 2019. I have offered an alternative explanation to this negative excess mortality, unlike that proposed by the MOH. (2)
The period July 2021 – Dec 2021 recorded an excess mortality of +27,013. This is accounted by the excess deaths from COVID-19, which saw the Crude Death Rate per 1000 persons, increase to 6.9 as compared to 5.1-5.3 the preceding 4 years. COVID-19 was the highest cause of deaths (19.8%) in 2021.
| Cause of Death
|
2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
| Ischemic Heart Disease | 13.9% | 15.6% | 15.0% | 17.0% | 13.7% |
| Pneumonia
|
12.7% | 11.8% | 12.2% | 11.4% | 11.1% |
| Cerebrovascular Accident | 7.1% | 7.8% | 8.0% | 8.3% | 6.5% |
| Road Traffic Accidents | 4.6% | 3.7% | 3.8% | 2.9% | 1.9% |
| Cancers
|
2.3% | 2.4% | 2.4% | 2.5% | 3.1% |
| COVID
|
– | – | – | – | 19.8% |
| Total Deaths
|
168,168 | 172,031 | 173,746 | 166,970 | 224,569 |
| Crude Death Rate per 1000 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 5.1 | 6.9 |
Apart from the excess deaths in the 3rd quarter of 2021, the Crude Death Rate has virtually returned to the figures prior to the pandemic. There is nothing from this most recent data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) to suggest that “Malaysians are dying at unprecedented rates”. (3)
In actual fact, the total of 50,276 deaths recorded in the third quarter of 2022 is 31.7% lower when compared with the third quarter of 2021 (73,606 deaths).
The author is probably not familiar with the concept of P-Score, or percentage of deaths that are above normal deaths.
The P-Score is a useful metric of excess mortality that will enable us compare our national excess mortality over a period of time. It will also allow us to compare our national excess mortality with other countries. (4)
If Malaysia had a P-score of 100% in a given week in 2023, it means that for that given week, the death count was 100% higher (that is double) than the projected death count for that week.
Pending exact figures from the MOH, eyeballing the excess mortality would suggest that the peak in September 2021 coincides with the excess deaths from the Delta wave. Whilst the peak in the first quarter of 2022, correlates well with the excess mortality from the Omicron wave.
The first quarter of 2023 has seen Malaysia move towards negative excess mortality and has lesser excess mortality compared to Singapore for the period 2022-2023.
Reference:
- https://murrayhunter.substack.com/p/malaysias-hidden-pandemic?r=4b63b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
- https://drmusanordin.com/2022/04/29/keeping-influenza-at-bay-during-covid-19-pandemic-plausible-reason-for-negative-excess-mortalities-malaysian-influenza-working-group/
- https://www.dosm.gov.my/portal-main/release-content/demographic-statistics-third-quarter-2022-malaysia
- https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
- https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysias-covid-19-deaths-hit-four-month-high-amid-omicron-wave
