Okinawa recorded 157 coronavirus patients admitted to hospital during the week of Sunday, about 1. 3 times more than last week.
Hospital beds reserved exclusively for COVID-19 patients are nearly full, making it difficult for many hospitals to accept new patients into their emergency departments.
At Yuuai Medical Center in the city of Tomigusuku, the special coronavirus ward reached full capacity on Tuesday, but paramedics continue to ask it to make do with patients. Doctors said they were struggling to manage the beds.
When doctors realize that a patient wants to be hospitalized, they can free up a bed by discharging another patient whose condition has relatively improved.
Yamauchi Sunao, head of the hospital’s emergency department, said he believes the situation is almost as bad as it was early last summer, when the hospital was overwhelmed. He described the moment as “hell” and lamented not being able to help some patients whose lives may have simply been saved.
Yamauchi expressed a strong sense of crisis, saying he feared an even greater deluge than last summer’s wave. He said he hoped everyone would take life-saving measures before that happened, to prevent last year’s scenario from falling again.
Another wave “would be painful for me, for my patients and for their families,” Yamauchi said.
Officials in Okinawa prefecture said it was already difficult to locate hospital beds for coronavirus patients. In some cases, paramedics spent more than an hour locating a hospital that could accommodate a patient.
Okinawa’s mild climate and beautiful beaches have made it one of Japan’s most popular tourist destinations. Economic operators have expressed concern about the effect of a further accumulation of coronavirus cases.
Summer is the peak tourist season and hotel bookings start to pile up at this time of year. But staff at a hotel in the larger city of Naha said they had managed to get a few cancellations per day. They also saw a slowdown in bookings by comparison. until last weekend, after coronavirus cases surged.
Staff at Novotel Okinawa Naha said some of their booked visitors also inquired about the infection scenario before their stay.
They said the booking rate for the summer holiday season is still about 10% lower this year than before the pandemic and that they expect more bookings in the coming weeks.
Sakamoto Kimiharu, general manager of Novotel Okinawa Naha, said he is very concerned because July and August are peak months and effects are expected for the entire year.
“If we were to revise our earnings forecasts downwards, the effect on our business would be huge,” he said.
The hotel maintained some preventative measures even after the government downgraded the virus, adding alcohol for disinfection at various locations and as gloves for diners at its buffet restaurant.
“We don’t require our visitors to wear masks or sanitize their hands, but we need them to enjoy Okinawa while taking action based on their own judgment,” Sakamoto said.
Takayama Yoshihiro, a doctor at Okinawa’s Chubu Hospital, is also part of an expert organization of the Ministry of Health. He said he believed the recent spread of the virus likely resembled the government’s downgrading of its status.
He said COVID infections are spreading in Okinawa among all age groups, with no signs of abating. He added that cases of other infectious diseases, such as breathing in syncytial virus, are also rising.
“It’s probably because other people have become more active after the degradation of the government and the spread of infectious diseases, which had been suppressed by precautions, is mind-boggling,” Takayama said.
He added that as young people return to their general activities, more and more of them are becoming seriously ill from infectious diseases other than the coronavirus.
Takayama also said hospitals are having a harder time managing beds than in previous years, as administrative officials are not as concerned about managing hospitalizations as they were before the government’s downgrade.
The Okinawa prefectural government no longer coordinates beds for coronavirus patients, who are now ending up in larger emergency hospitals. He said this puts pressure on some medical institutions.
“I think it’s incumbent on the government to take action when rescue personnel can’t locate places to transport patients,” Takayama said.
He said he was calling on the population to take preventive measures and put pressure on anyone with symptoms of the coronavirus not to go to school or work.
He also said the elderly and other vulnerable people deserve to be aware of the dangers of the virus in their daily lives. He warned them to avoid crowds if possible and to refrain from attending gatherings and dining with others until the infectious situation improves.