Publication: Estimating the COVID-19 mortality burden over two full years of the pandemic in Malaysia
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Date
2022
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Abstract
Malaysia reported its first known local transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) on 5 February 2020.1 On 17 March 2020, the first two deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the country occurred—just a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared the growing outbreak a pandemic. Two years into the current pandemic, there have been over 32,000
deaths linked to COVID-19 in Malaysia over three major epidemic waves and a cumulative case count of over three million, making it one of the most affected countries in the Western Pacific region. Absolute death counts are often the metric of choice in official reports (and in accompanying graphics—often in large, bold numbers—circulated through social media or chat groups to be fixated upon by the populace) summaris ing the latest COVID-19 statistics. Burden of disease approaches, such as measuring years of life lost (YLL) owing to premature death from a disease, offer a more
appropriate metric than number of deaths for measuring the mortality burden of a disease on a population and sub-populations by recognising that deaths at youn ger ages have a greater impact on population health. This study aims to estimate the burden of mortality from COVID-19 by calculating YLL to COVID-19 over two full years of the pandemic in Malaysia, to compare YLL rates across different states, and to compare the
impact of mortality directly attributable to COVID-19 relative to deaths from other leading causes of disease and injury in the country in pre-pandemic times.