WHILE COVID-19 has been detrimental to the people’s health and livelihoods, Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) said the pandemic brought some positive impact to the country.
“This can be seen in the reduction of road accidents in 2020. The less human movement and economic activity had also provided much relief to the environment to heal itself,” said Chief Statistician of Malaysia Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin.
On road accidents, Uzir said that for the first time since 1990, Malaysia recorded a significant drop by registering a double-digit decline.
“The road accident rate registered a double digit decline of 26.3% (2020: 418,237 cases) as compared to an increment of 3.4% in 2019, or lesser by 149,279 cases.
“Moreover, in 2020, a total of 4,634 deaths were recorded due to road accidents, compared to 6,167 deaths in the previous year.
“This figure shows a decrease of 1,533 accident-related deaths during the implementation of the movement control order (MCO),” he added.
Selangor has recorded the highest number of road accidents in 2020 at 123,230 cases, which was a decrease of 26.7% compared to in 2019 (168,222 cases).
This was followed by Johor (58,207 cases) and Kuala Lumpur (50,215 cases).
“The three states which recorded the lowest number of road accidents were Perlis (1,615 cases), Terengganu (9,152 cases) and Kelantan (9,752 cases),” Uzir said.
Touching on environmental impact, Uzir stated that most air stations throughout the country recorded between “good” and “moderate” air quality status for 2020 as opposed to 2019.
“As for the ‘good’ status, the Sibu station recorded it for 291 days (2019: 96 days), followed by the Kluang station 277 days (2019: 84 days) and Pengerang station 274 days (2019: 111 days).
“As for ‘excellent’, 55 stations recorded it with the highest number of stations coming from Terengganu with 13 stations (2019: seven stations), Johor with 12 stations (2019: three stations) and Pahang with nine stations (2019: for stations),” he mentioned.
Clinical waste soar
However, COVID-19 introduced another set of problem; disposing an increased number of clinical waste.
Uzir added the authorities faced with a challenging task of handling disposed COVID-19 test equipment in health facilities and quarantine centres.
“The clinical waste produced in 2020 grew by 18.1%, to 39.9 thousand metric tonnes as compared to 33.8 thousand metric tonnes in 2019.
“Among the states, Selangor generated the highest clinical waste at 9.7 thousand metric tonnes followed by Sarawak (4.1 thousand metric tonnes) and Kuala Lumpur (4.1 thousand metric tonnes),” he noted. – May 3, 2022
