KUALA LUMPUR, May 16 — As a grim reminder of the worsening Covid-19 situation in the country, the Ministry of Health (MOH) today shared that the Sungai Buloh Hospital is now forced to prepare a morgue container on-site to house bodies of dead Covid-19 patients.

The MOH shared the update on its Facebook page, revealing how the hospital’s forensic medicine department was forced to resort to such a solution, as an additional morgue.

“Today, six more deaths were reported in that hospital.

“More than 80 per cent of deaths from Covid-19 infection in this country is made up of the elderly and those who have more than one chronic disease or are comorbid.

“Most of them get infected from close family members. If you live with those who are of high risk, protect yourself to enable you to protect them,” the posting read.

The number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia dipped slightly to 3,780 today, with Selangor alone recording 1,275 cases, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah announced earlier, adding that 36 patients had died from the virus infection nationwide.

On the number of cases according to states, Sarawak followed suit with 405 cases recorded in the state, with Kedah recording 363 cases

In his statement, Dr Noor Hisham said that 3,990 patients have recovered as of today, with 272 in need on ventilators.

He also announced the detection of 11 new Covid-19 clusters.

The nation yesterday recorded 4,140 cases, with a record 44 deaths.

Setting up of temporary morgues has become common in several countries badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic such as United Kingdom, United States and India.

In January, Reuters reported that British authorities had to set up temporary morgues in some areas after local hospital mortuaries ran out of space due to a surge in deaths caused by Covid-19.

In California, United States a temporary morgue was erected in the parking lot adjacent to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s building to handle the record number of bodies it’s seeing.