The crisis has already arrived at Eiju General Hospital, a pink, 10-storey building in central Tokyo, which has reported 140 cases of COVID-19 in the past two weeks. Of those, at least 44 are doctors, nurses and other medical staff.
"We could empty out an entire ward and use it just for corona patients, but that means those patients will have to go elsewhere," said a doctor specialising in infectious diseases at a major hospital in the greater Tokyo area."If we can't do that, it will lead to the virus spreading all through the hospital and lead to a collapse of our medical system."
Authorities have tried to test and track in a way that avoided overwhelming Japan's hospitals, said Hitoshi Oshitani, an infectious disease specialist on the government panel shaping the country's coronavirus policy. "We have not been able to clearly contain the contagion from the first wave," Nishiura said, referring to Eiju General. A spokesman from the hospital declined to comment on Monday.
Though people with COVID-19 do not all need such rooms, they still must be kept apart from other patients. "The response was slow and even now it's slow," he said. Suzuki has submitted 10 requests since then asking for a range of measures, from procuring more ventilators to clarifying Tokyo's policy on treating critical patients.