The Tokyo metropolitan government has begun moving coronavirus patients infected with mild symptoms that do not require hospitalization to hotels to recover.
On Tuesday, 11 such people were moved to a hotel being rented by the metropolitan government. The measure is intended to secure enough hospital beds as the pandemic grows. Patients will spend as long as two weeks in their rooms.
The government is renting the entire Toyoko Inn Tokyo-eki Shin-ohashi Mae, a business hotel in the capital's Chuo Ward.
Vehicles carrying patients began arriving at the hotel a little after 3 p.m. Tuesday. The drivers were wearing personal protective equipment. The patients and other passengers, with masks on but dressed in regular clothes, immediately entered the hotel after being dropped off.
The metropolitan government said the patients would stay in rooms on the fourth floor or higher in the 12-story hotel. They would not be permitted to leave their rooms or meet with anyone from outside, except to get meals on the ground floor.
Doctors will be dispatched there during the day and two nurses will be posted at the hotel 24 hours a day.
They will not provide medical care at the hotel, but will monitor the patients' health over the phone.
Patients whose symptoms have disappeared will undergo PCR testing and will be allowed to leave the hotel if they have two consecutive negative tests. If a patient's condition worsens, a doctor may decide to send them back to the hospital.
As of Monday, there were 1,033 patients in Tokyo who needed hospitalization, but only 1,000 beds available. The metropolitan government wants to supplement this with as many as 1,000 hotel rooms.
The Toyoko Inn Tokyo-eki Shin-ohashi Mae plans to accept about 100 patients. The metropolitan government intends to screen and send more patients starting Wednesday.
"There is no precedent for this, so we have to carefully verify how to do things like securing personnel and disinfection," an official of the metropolitan infectious disease control section said.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said it would allow mild cases and others to stay at home or go directly to hotels or other facilities without being hospitalized, but the metropolitan government decided that all patients would be first admitted to a hospital, then moved to a hotel based on a doctor's assessment.
On Tuesday the central government decided to use temporary quarters for police officers who were going to provide security at the Olympics as provisional sites for accommodating mild and asymptomatic cases.
The four candidate sites are temporary quarters for police officers being built in seaside areas in Rinkaicho in Edogawa Ward, Shinsuna and Shiomi in Koto Ward, and Jonanjima in Ota Ward.
These two-story prefabricated structures are slated to be completed in June.
The plan is to proceed with renovations quickly once the proposed supplementary budget for the fiscal year, which includes funding for this project, is enacted.
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