More than 7,400 COVID-19 Infected People in Tokyo now ‘Waiting for Hospital Allocation’

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:32 JST, January 19, 2021

People in Tokyo infected with the novel coronavirus who are waiting for hospital or care-center allocation has jumped about 13-fold to 7,481 as of Monday from 577 as of Dec. 1 last year. Those who are recuperating at home has risen to 9,442.

In December last year, the National Association of Public Health Center Directors submitted an emergency proposal to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, claiming that “the critical situation is ongoing” due to the spread of infection. It called for the scope of epidemiological surveys to be more precisely focused on hospitalized patients and the elderly, as well as for the shortening of health observations for those who have had close contact with the infected.

Kanagawa prefectural government began this month to narrow down the targets of epidemiological surveys to places where the risk of infection is serious.