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.
According to Japan’s health ministry, the combined total of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms announced by local governments across Japan stood at 51 on Jan. 1. The figure climbed to 89 in a week, to 233 in two weeks and topped 400 on Friday for the first time in about three months, in line with the increase of new infection cases.
PM Kishida pledged to boost medical treatments for people recovering at home or at lodging facilities, and to accelerate booster vaccinations, noting that he plans to “calmly advance responses (against the omicron variant) based on the latest information, without excessive fear.”
“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.”
Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward started giving third COVID-19 vaccine shots to residents aged 65 or over Friday, at a time when the highly contagious omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is spreading in many parts of Japan.
The southwestern Japan city of Fukuoka began to give a third shot of novel coronavirus vaccines Wednesday, earlier than initially planned, to residents aged 65 or over.
The total number of COVID-19 deaths that happened at home in Japan has reached 675 since January 2020, when the country’s first novel coronavirus infection case was confirmed, the government said.
On December 24th, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced the results of a survey that the number of cases of abuse of elderly people at home in 2020 increased by 2.1% from the previous year to 17,281 cases, a record high. There were 25 deaths, an increase of 10 from the previous year.
Eight people have been newly found to have the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus in Japan, the government said Friday, with the total number of omicron variant cases reported so far in the country rising to 12.
The Japanese government plans to conduct antigen and polymerase chain reaction tests for the novel coronavirus for people with no COVID-19 symptoms free of charge, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday.
Barrier Free Japan