(Newsletter: CRVS Insight May 2022)

Data on COVID-19-related deaths are essential to assess the mortality rate in a country. Due to the high transmissibility of the virus, collecting this particular data is very challenging but countries are adopting innovative approaches to address this issue. At a recent Asia-Pacific Stats Café, the Centre for Burden of Disease Research, Institute for Public Health, National Institutes of Health, Malaysia shared the country's approach to achieving data completeness for COVID-19-related deaths. Malaysia's MoH has complemented hospital-based deaths (registered by medically certified officers) with public/home-based data (registered by informants/next of kin). This approach has enabled Malaysia to have the necessary data to analyze excess mortality due to COVID-19. 

Latest excess mortality estimate by Malaysia's MoH during the pandemic (data available from March 2020 to December 2021) remained low, at 2.4% (+7,914). MoH cited high level of compliance with their COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by the public and wide vaccination coverage as the main reasons for the low excess mortality. For further information, a journal article was recently published in The Lancet.