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Hospitals in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, are running out of beds and ventilators after getting hit by their fourth wave of Covid-19 infections.
Doctors have advised against going ahead with the Tokyo Summer Olympics to be held in two months in view of the current Covid-19 situation.
Covid-19 situation in Japan
“Simply put, this is a collapse of the medical system,” said Yuji Tohda, the director of Kindai University Hospital in Osaka according to Reuters.
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images
A government advisory panel will consider imposing a state of emergency if hospitalisation rates of Covid-19 patients are less than 25 per cent. As of last Thursday (May 20), only 14 per cent of the prefecture's 13,770 Covid-19 patients hospitalised.
The hospital beds for serious Covid-19 cases were almost fully occupied, with 96 per cent of 348 beds used. 17 people in Osaka have died from Covid-19 outside hospital, Reuters reported.
According to AP, patients with other critical illnesses are also facing a delay in getting treatment as the hospitals in Osaka are overwhelmed.
Due to the strain in the healthcare system, Osaka prefecture is planning to re-extend the prefecture's Covid-19 state of emergency which is scheduled to end on May 31, says The Asahi Shimbun.
Hospital staff pushed to their limits
Yasunori Komatsu, who heads a union of regional government employees, told Reuters that healthcare workers are not better off as nurses in local health centres are severely overworked during the pandemic.
A total of 55.7 per cent of nurses who take part in a survey conducted in January and February by the Japan National Hospital Workers' Union said that they always felt stressed, tired and that the protective gear they don against the virus made them feel dehydrated, according to Kyodo News.
Satsuki Nakayama, the head of the nursing department at Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital (OMPUH), also echoed the same concerns over the wellbeing of healthcare workers, Reuters reported.
Nakayama said that those working at the Intensive Care Units have hit their "breaking point" and suggested to have a personnel change in the interest of both patients and nurses.
Advisory not to proceed with the Summer Olympics
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images.
With the Tokyo Olympics set to start on July 23, many medical professionals have advised against proceeding with the event in light of their local Covid-19 situation.
According to Reuters, Akira Takasu, the head of emergency medicine at OMPUH said, "The Olympics should be stopped, because we already have failed to stop the flow of new variants from England, and next might be an inflow of Indian variants."
Takasu fears for another outbreak in the summer should the Olympics happen.
Yet, John Coates, the International Olympic Committee vice president, said that the Olympic Games would "absolutely" proceed even if Tokyo is still under a state of emergency amid the Covid-19 pandemic, drawing criticism from the Japanese community.
Top image via Buddhika Weerasinghe/ Getty.