Khairy should urgently set up a special committee of public health experts including representatives from the private sector to reduce the Covid-19 mortality rate which has claimed over 12,000 lives in Malaysia in the last five months

Yesterday, Hong Kong reported the first Covid-linked death in five months when an elderly 73-year-old man died as the city struggled with a worsening outbreak.

In Malaysia in the last five months, there were over 12,000 Covid-19 deaths.

Although the Omicron variant has taken over the Delta variant with a lower mortality rate, there were 1,062 Covid-19 deaths in December, 498 deaths in January and 80 deaths in February.

The government should regard the Covid-19 mortality rate as completely unacceptable and I call on the Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin to urgently set up a special committee of public health experts including representatives from the private sector to reduce the Covid-19 mortality rate.

The World Health Organization has lamented that half a million Covid-19 deaths had been recorded since the Omicron variant was discovered, calling the toll "beyond tragic."

The WHO's incident manager Abdi Mahamud said that 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths had been recorded globally since Omicron was declared a variant of concern in late November.

It has since rapidly overtaken Delta as the world's dominant Covid variant because it is more transmissible, though it appears to cause less severe illness.

"In the age of effective vaccines, half a million people dying, it's really something," Mahamud told a live interaction on the WHO's social media channels.

"While everyone was saying Omicron is milder, (they) missed the point that half a million people have died since this was detected," he said.

"It's beyond tragic."

The cumulative total of Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia is 32,065 deaths and the cumulative total of Covid-19 cases is 2,956,332 which may exceed 3 million cases before this week is out.