TOKYO – As the number of COVID-19 cases in Japan increases, the country’s 470 public gyms once suffer back while facing a developing call for coronavirus detection, tracking and surveillance.
“The volume of new patients is now much larger than that of the first wave,” said Masahiro Yamada, director of the Chuwa Public Health Center, located in a suburb of the southeast city of Osaka. There are enough beds for COVID-19 patients shown. But for suspicious cases, “assigning medical and PCR tests while driving is very difficult,” Yamada said.
Japan’s workload remains high, with 1,085 new infections reported on Thursday. While the center of the epidemic in Japan has long been Tokyo, the virus has spread to other cities and prefectures. The 37 cases reported through Nara on Tuesday were a record for the prefecture.
Downtown Chuwa has been at the forefront of Japan’s fight against the new coronavirus since the country’s first-known Japanese patient in January in Nara. Public gyms receive calls from citizens and clinics, perform tests, examine infection pathways in the cases shown, and monitor the fitness of others who come into contact with other inflamed people.
With fewer than 20 other people handling the reaction to coronavirus in the chuwa center, the staff has a short break those days. They paint after midnight and on weekends. In the absence of a transparent end to the pandemic, “it will be difficult to continue without [a] sustainable means of functioning,” added the paint force, Yamada said.
Little known to the public before the pandemic, Japanese public gymnasiums were established in 1937 to treat public fitness disorders, such as infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. These establishments help how Japan has managed, at least initially, to involve the pandemic, even with little delight in the beyond of recent epidemics in Asia, such as SARS or MERS.
Japan’s first Japanese user to test positive for coronavirus, a bus driving force that transported tourists from Wuhan, the central Chinese city that is the epicentre of the pandemic.
The driving force had typical bloodless symptoms, but during an irregularly long 10-day era. It was not considered a suspicious case under the direction of the Ministry of Health at the time because it had not been in Wuhan or had not come into contact with a user who was known to have the disease. But the clinic he visited reported his case to the Chuwa center, as clinics usually do for diseases that can affect public health, such as dengue, tuberculosis or food poisoning. After testing negative on several diseases, adding influenza, mycoplasma pneumonia and respiratory syncytial virus, the bus’s driving force tested positive for the new coronavirus.
“I had no idea that the first case would come from Nara,” which is not a big city, Yamada said. The Chuwa centre has created a list of close contacts of the bus driver on the procedures used for TB infections.
When infections peaked around April, when PCR testing capacity and hospital beds were still scarce, public gymnasiums were criticized. They were guilty of deciding who was being tested, given the capacity constraints. “I think we tested the ones that needed to be tested to the fullest from the beginning,” Yamada said. “We made sure that [the system] did not collapse, even in the absence of PCR evidence, and those whose symptoms have become severe,” he said.
Toshio Takatorige, a professor of public fitness at Kansai University in western Japan, says the country’s public gyms have helped prevent the spread of infections in hospitals. But it also suggests that Japan was fortunate enough to have public fitness professionals on the floor when it hit COVID-19.
The number of public gyms has declined dramatically in recent decades, from 850 in 1990 to 469 in 2020, according to the Japanese Association of Directors of Public Health Centers. While Japan followed the example of countries like the United States, which concentrated more resources on vaccines and complex remedies, public gyms were thought to be less important. Meanwhile, discussions about the transfer of duty for infectious disease outbreaks to hospitals and the construction of systems for them were still ongoing when the coronavirus reached Japanese shores.
Public gyms have remained in place due to persistent tb cases and new problems, such as SARS and new strains of influenza, according to Takatorige. “Having a giant medical research facility is effective in fighting new infectious diseases,” he said.
But with the increase in the number of COVID-19 patients as others return to work, others are more in touch with each other, multiplying the pathways of infection imaginable. And as new tests become available, the burden of public gyms can reach a breaking point.
There were about 35,500 public fitness nurses active in Japan in 2019, however, it is difficult to increase that number. Public fitness nurses also have a wide variety of tasks, in addition to dealing with suspected child abuse, preventing “lifestyle-related diseases” such as diabetes and people’s intellectual fitness. “Japanese medical facilities will now face genuine testing,” Takatorige said.
“I think it would be smart if more hospitals could also check for suspicious [coronavirus] cases at the scene,” instead of going through the lengthy consultation procedure of public gyms, Yamada said from downtown Chuwa. “As autumn and winter approach, many patients will expand symptoms that would possibly be COVID-19 influenza,” he said.
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