A total of 18 people were newly confirmed to be infected, including 11 residents and 7 staff at the facility for intellectually disabled people, “Mishin Gakuen,” located in Saeki Ward, Hiroshima City.
Shigeo Hoshino, the manager of Akebono-no-en, said: “The country attaches great importance to refraining from going out and refraining from contact with people. I’m afraid of the spread of the infection because of the nature of the facility, which means that people live in groups. “
In response to the emergency declaration, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has announced a response policy for facilities for the disabled.
Facilities not only need to prevent the further spread of the virus but to provide ongoing care. There is an urgent need for local governments to build support systems that will enable such facilities to quickly deal with infections.
t is said that this facility was visited by users who were confirmed to be infected at the disability welfare facility “Hokuso Nursery Garden” where outbreaks occurred in Higashisho Town, Chiba Prefecture. A total of 113 people have been infected in connection with the facilities in Higashisho-cho.
The facility has 63 staff and 70 residents in their 20s to 80s, and 37 people had symptoms of fever, so the prefecture was conducting a virus test.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced on March 8 that one person found to infected with the new coronavirus on March 6 was a staff member of a municipal welfare facility for the disabled. The ward will close this facility temporarily until March 16 to check the health of users and staff.
Out of providers of home-visit nursing care services, almost 30 percent have seen their face mask stocks depleted, the survey also showed, underscoring the serious situation facing those who have regular contact with elderly people, who tend to develop severe symptoms once they are infected with the virus.
Japanese assistance groups are calling for attention to the impact of the novel coronavirus spread on the lives of people with intractable diseases and visual and other disabilities.
While the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare argues local authority child guidance centers should, as a default, use foster care, they are under no obligation to do so, according to Michael Rivera-King, who has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and will publish a book on foster care in Japan this year.
Barrier Free Japan