On February 7th Yamanishi prefecture started offering the third vaccination shot against the new coronavirus for medical workers and others, as well as vaccination of employees of facilities for the disabled, where clusters are likely to occur.
There are concerns that if nursery school and certified child care facilities are closed, working parents may not be able to go to work as they will be unable to leave their children at such facilities.
The number of such facilities suspending services as of last Thursday, excluding privately operated or locally licensed ones, increased fourfold in a week along with the spike in COVID-19 cases and well exceeded the previous high of 185 in September, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Last April, two brothers in their 50s were found dead in a house in Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka City. The younger brother (56 years old at the time) had a severe intellectual disability, and the elder brother (57 years old at the time) was the sole caregiver.
During an investigation where a female employee was arrested for assaulting a child with a disability at a welfare facility in Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, it was discovered that several other employees were suspected of abusing the child.
According to the city, in June 2020 and June 2009, a staff member at the school abused a user who had gone into someone else’s rice field by making him stand for four hours with a 5 kg bag of sand in both hands with the consent of the facility director. In response to the city’s investigation, he said:
“I thought that if I didn’t let them understand their problematic behavior, they would have trouble when they go out into the world. I didn’t think it was abuse.”
“The omicron variant seems to have a higher transmissibility, but also is less likely to cause serious symptoms,” Kishida said to reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office. “But if the infection spreads rapidly among the elderly, the percentage of people who become seriously ill could increase.”
The 36-year-old former employee, was initially arrested on Dec. 8 on suspicion of murdering a different resident, Setsuji Yoshida, then 76, on July 6, 2020, by injecting air into a syringe connected to an intravenous tube attached to his leg, Ibaraki prefectural police served the suspect with the additional warrant.
The government will review the current standard that requires at least one staff member to be assigned to every three residents in a nursing home, and make adjustments around a proposal that would allow one person to handle four residents.
In 2016, Masakazu Shimizu (9 years old at the time), who was a short-term admission at a support facility for children with disabilities in Nakahara Ward, Kawasaki City, died while sleeping. It was judged that the act of a female employee in her teens was “abuse”.
Barrier Free Japan