The following is an excerpt from an interview with new Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Norihisa Tamura.
As a measure against the novel coronavirus, the government intends to establish a system to prepare about 200,000 kits per day for antigen tests, which are more convenient than PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests. We are urging manufacturers to gear production toward that purpose. If influenza also spreads from autumn to winter, 300,000 people with fevers might visit medical institutions per day. Handling both of these infections would require robust testing capabilities.
In general, it takes five to 10 years to develop a vaccine while confirming its safety and other factors. However, for the development of novel coronavirus vaccines, manufacturers around the world have been facilitating development at an extraordinarily fast pace.
The Japanese government wants not only to establish a vaccine supply system, but also to steadily disseminate information about the current situation of the vaccine's development.
Thus far, conducting online medical examinations with novel coronavirus patients has been permitted only as an exception, but the government plans to consider a permanent roll out of online treatments to deal with the virus.
In order to support medical care services at home for the elderly, remote visitations by doctors are also needed to a certain extent due to the limited number of doctors and nurses. Taking these matters into account, including medical examination safety and a medical service fee system that incorporates hospital management, we want to discuss how to make the most of online medical examinations.
Prime Minister [Yoshihide] Suga has instructed us to enable insurance-covered fertility treatment as quickly as possible. The prime minister also understands that it will take some time to do so.
Fertility treatments vary, so in order to find a treatment that can be covered by insurance it is necessary to determine what methods fall under insurance coverage and then confirm their safety and effectiveness.
The government will also reduce the burden of treatment fees until they can be covered by insurance. To improve the current subsidy system, we want to expedite discussions, including for next year's fiscal budget.
As our ministry's workload has been overburdened due to the spread of the coronavirus, it is necessary to review the content of our work. A pandemic can take place at any time. With the proposals made by the Liberal Democratic Party in mind about how the organization should act in dealing with infectious diseases, the government will also make efforts to review governance, such as by strengthening cooperation with prefectural governments, public health centers and other entities, so that the public can be reassured.
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