Look around you and you'll probably see a lot of Malaysians who take the opportunity to go jalan-jalan and go for camping trips despite being advised not to.

Well, we hope this news report would scare them into taking care of themselves, especially those who are considered high risk.

Worrying stats

The National Institutes of Health recenty revealed that a majority of Malaysians who succumbed to COVID-19 complications had at least one underlying health issue.

Dr Kalaiarasu Peariasamy, director of the Institute for Clinical Research at the NIH, told New Straits Times that 88 per cent of reported COVID-19 deaths in the country involved patients with comorbidities.

In fact, they found that patients with comorbidities would be in worse conditions compared to patients who do not have underlying health issues.

According to Dr Kalaiarasu, the most common comorbidities suffered by COVID-19 patients who succumbed to complications are:

• High blood pressure (64 per cent)
• Diabetes mellitus (47.2 per cent)
• Heart diseases (23.6 per cent)
• Kidney disease (21.8 per cent)
• High cholesterol (17.4 per cent)
• Lung disease (11.1 per cent)
• Cancer (4.3 per cent)
• Liver disease (two per cent)

Dr Kalaiarasu added that COVID-19 patients with these diseases would complicate a hospital's management of the pandemic.

"For COVID-19 patients, some of these diseases become acute and that is a huge challenge for our healthcare personnel to not only manage the virus but also the escalation of their diseases," he was quoted as saying.

On top of that, Dr Kalaiarasu also revealed that 65 per cent of those infected in Malaysia are men, and for every 1,000 people infected, four are most likely to die.

As of Sunday (21 February), we have recorded 1,065 COVID-19 related deaths in the country.

Heart disease is top killer

Looking at the statistics above, it's really no surprise that high risk Malaysians have succumbed to the virus.

That's because heart disease remains the top cause of death among Malaysians, Free Malaysia Today reported.

Chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin revealed that Malaysia recorded 16,325 heart-related deaths in 2019, which makes up 15 per cent of medically certified deaths that year.

69.4 per cent of deaths from ischaemic heart disease were made up of males in the age groups of 41 to 59 years (18 per cent) and 60 years and over (16 per cent).