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TOKYO: Japanese doctors warn that more must be done to prevent the coronavirus from overwhelming the country’s health system, as confirmed cases exceeded 10,000, despite a state of emergency across the country.
Experts have been alarmed by a recent spike in COVID-19 infections, with hundreds detected daily.
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The Japanese outbreak remains less severe than in the most affected European countries, but its case number is one of the highest in Asia after China and India, and is on par with South Korea.
So far, 171 deaths have been recorded in Japan and 10,751 cases, with the country under a one-month state of emergency, initially spanning seven regions, but now across the country.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged residents to reduce contact with others by 70 to 80 percent, and the number of people in Tokyo’s normally crowded transportation system has decreased significantly.
The government has asked people in Japan to avoid going out and reduce contact, but shops and some restaurants remain open. (Photo: AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU)
But the measures don’t stop people from going out, and many stores and even restaurants remain open, even as medical associations warn that the country’s health system is struggling to cope.
“The system is on the verge of collapse in many places in Japan,” said Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at Kobe University who has repeatedly criticized the government’s response to the crisis.
At a press conference on Monday (April 20), Iwata said Japan’s strategy of limited testing and intensive contact tracing worked well in the early phase of the local outbreak, when the numbers were small.
But he accused Japan of failing to adapt as the outbreak grew.
“We needed to prepare for once the situation changed, once cluster chasing was not effective and we needed to change the strategy immediately,” he said.
“But traditionally, and historically speaking, Japan is not very good at changing strategy,” he added.
“We are very poor even thinking about plan B because thinking about plan B is a sign of admitting the failure of plan A.”
NOT A ‘WORST CASE’ SCENARIO
The Japanese government argues that it has fine-tuned its strategy, increasing testing capacity, changing the rules requiring all positive cases to remain in hospitals where wards are quickly filled, and imposing a state of emergency to reduce the spread.
But medical experts have called the measures insufficient.
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“The beds for new coronavirus patients are still almost full,” Haruo Ozaki, president of the Tokyo Medical Association, warned last week.
The association has been increasing beds, but with a host of new cases arriving every day, “the beds are being taken up instantly,” he said.
The health minister has acknowledged that hospitals in some cases have rejected patients suspected of coronavirus in ambulances.
“Japan has not built a system where ordinary hospitals can receive infectious disease patients in an emergency, when designated hospitals cannot cope,” Ozaki said Friday.
“We are doing our best … but the infections are spreading faster than expected,” he added.
And hospitals are also struggling with equipment shortages, and the mayor of Osaka asked for donations of unused raincoats for healthcare workers who are currently required to use trash bags for protective equipment.
Both Iwata and Ozaki warned that the state of emergency in force until at least May 6 was not enough.
“As they talk about border controls and declining person-to-person contacts, they let stores remain open,” Ozaki complained.
Iwata said he was “half encouraged and half discouraged” by the infection numbers in Tokyo, which he called “relatively stable.”
“My biggest fear was the explosion of diagnoses … like in New York City, which did not happen,” he said.
“These numbers are much better than the worst case scenario.”
