The number of coronavirus patients recuperating at home had exceeded 100,000 nationwide for the first time by Wednesday, according to statistics compiled by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
Statistics for 46 of Japan's 47 prefectures (excluding Saitama) show that a total of 118,229 COVID-19 patients were staying at home as of Wednesday. Compared to a week earlier, the number of such patients increased by about 37,000 in these prefectures. The term "home recuperator" does not include patients for whom hospitalization is being sought in principle, so it is likely that many more people are actually recuperating at home.
Tokyo has the largest number of COVID-19 patients staying at home with 25,139, followed by Kanagawa Prefecture with 15,222, Osaka Prefecture with 14,732 and Chiba Prefecture with 10,560.
It was found that Saitama Prefecture had overstated its number of such patients by several thousand, so the number is now being closely reexamined. For that reason, the prefecture did not disclose its latest data. There were no such patients in eight prefectures: Iwate, Akita, Gunma, Fukui, Yamanashi, Nara, Wakayama and Kagoshima.
-- No. quadrupled in 1 month
Of patients recuperating at home, many cannot be hospitalized soon after they become seriously ill because of the shortages of inpatient beds. Doctors and others who provide home-visit care for home recuperators say they have patients staying at home even though they are in need of hospitalization, which is an abnormal situation.
Hiroo Hanabusa, head of the Shinjuku Hiro Clinic in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, said that before the fourth wave of the pandemic this spring, he used to receive no more than several requests each month for home-visit care for COVID-19 patients. However, the situation has totally changed with this summer's fifth wave: He has been receiving more than 20 such requests a day since the end of July.
In contrast to the fourth wave of the pandemic, there are now many patients who cannot be admitted to hospitals even though they become seriously ill. At present the clinic sees about 70 patients, providing medical care online and by other means to check their symptoms, blood oxygen levels and other conditions. If they get worse, he visit them at their homes.
The number of coronavirus patients recuperating at home in Tokyo has exceeded 25,000, approximately quadrupling from a month ago. The hospitalization rate, which shows the percentage of people infected with the virus who are admitted to facilities such as hospitals that have beds for COVID-19 patients (there are a total of about 6,000 such beds in Tokyo), stood at only 10% as of Thursday.
At a Tokyo metropolitan government meeting on monitoring coronavirus infections held that day, an expert warned, "We are in a situation where we cannot save lives that could have been saved, and the situation is going to get worse."
In Shinjuku Ward, more than 1,000 coronavirus patients were recuperating at home as of Thursday. "The basic principle is to reduce the number of people waiting for hospital admission to zero. This would help normalize medical care services for COVID-19 patients," Hanabusa said. "It is impossible to increase the number of inpatient beds in a short period of time, so what is now important is to facilitate cooperation among medical institutions in different communities to prevent infections and provide early treatment for patients so that they will not develop serious symptoms. "
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
