Comparing the COVID-19 Mortality occuring in Hospitals and Those Brought in Dead within Malaysia

Measuring the success of the control of COVID-19 in any country includes a review of the mortality specially to compare the deaths of those dying in hospitals and those Brought-In-Dead (BID). The objective of this study was to compare the deaths comparing COVID-19 deaths that occurred within the hospitals and BIDs in Malaysia. This cross-sectional study utilised secondary data from the 17/3/20 - 28/2/21. Data such as the basic demography, comorbidities were analysed descriptively and a binary-logistic regression analysis to compare the independent variables against the outcome of being BID compared to dying in hospital was done. From the database, 120 cases were included as BID and 120 patients from the 1006 who passed away in hospital were randomly selected as comparators. Data collected was entered into SPSS v21.0 for analysis. The mean age for BIDs were 59.59 (SD: 18.74), with more males (70.8%), 61.7% of them were Malaysians, 46.7% from Sabah and 64.2% of them having at least one co-morbidity. When compared to those who died in the hospital- age (p=0.03), nationality (p<0.001) and states where the death occurred (p=0.04) had a statistically significant difference when comparing the two groups. The median time of admission to death in the hospital group was 5 (IQR: 12.25). A multivariate binary logistic regression analysis conducted including all demographic data yielded a final conclusion that the only factor that distinguished the BID from those dying in the hospital was being a foreigner (AOR: 4.32 [95%CI: 2.02-9.24], p