By Murray Hunter

BANGKOK, Thailand:More Malaysians are dying now than during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to excess mortality statistics. Excess mortality measures the number of deaths from all causes in a year, as compared with an average death rate over the previous five year period.

According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), the excess mortality rate remained low at 2.4 percent (+7,914), during the COVID-19 pandemic, between March 2020 and December 2021. However, statistics show that since the pandemic excess mortality in Malaysia has risen dramatically to levels between 2-48 percent, averaging somewhere around 20 percent during the period January 2022 to May 2023.

With a number of elderly and those with comorbidities dying during the pandemic, excess mortality should actually be lower than what it is today.

Malaysia is now suffering from a hidden pandemic. This is not unique to Malaysia, similar excess mortality rates are occurring across the world, and have not been explained. This unusually high excess death rate since the pandemic should be of extreme concern to the MOH. However, there has been no expressions of concern or explanations coming from the Director General of the MOH, Dr Muhammad Radzi Abu Hassan, or the Minister for Health Dr Zaliha Mustafa.

Without a thorough exploration into why so many Malaysians are currently dying, we don’t know what is killing so many people and how to stop this. Covid-19 doesn’t explain these excess deaths, as they appear to be unrelated.

These current excess death rates are far above what existed during the Covid-19 pandemic and are akin to a war or major terrorist act in magnitude.

The government must make this problem a top priority.