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Hospitals in Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka, are under a wave of coronavirus cases, depleting beds and fans, as depleted doctors warn of a “system collapse” and recommend continuing with the Olympics this summer.
The speeding down in Osaka’s health care system underscores the challenges of organizing a key global sporting event in two months, especially when about half of Japan’s medical staff have undergone inoculations.
“This is simply a collapse of the medical system,” said Yuji Tohda, director of Osaka Kindai University Hospital in Osaka.
“The a highly infectious British variant and vigilance has led to an explosive increase in the number of patients. “
Japan has avoided major infections suffered by other nations, but Osaka prefecture has weighed in on the fourth wave, with 3,849 new positive tests reported as of Thursday.
This represents a jump of more than five times over the corresponding period three months ago.
In the prefecture, only 14 percent of the 13,770 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized, most of them left to defend themselves. The latest hospitalization rate in Tokyo, by comparison, is 37 percent.
A government advisory group sees rates of less than 25 per cent as a factor in examining the establishment of a state of emergency.
As of Thursday, 96 percent of 348 hospital beds were used for serious cases of the Osaka virus. Since March, 17 people have been killed outside the prefecture’s hospital, officials said this month.
The variant can make young people sick very quickly, and when they are seriously ill, patients have difficulty healing, said Dr. Toshiaki Minami, director of Osaka University Hospital of Medicine and Pharmacy (OMPUH).
“I think a lot of young people so far thought they were invincible. But this time it can’t be that way. Everyone takes the same risk. “
Break point
Minami said a supplier recently told him that stockpiles of propofol, a key drug used to sedate intubated patients, are very low and that there is a lack of ventilators that are bad for COVID-19 patients at Tohda Hospital.
Satsuki Nakayama, head of the nursing department at OMPUH, said that caring for patients with intensive care in the face of the risk of infection has done great harm to the staff.
“I have some staff in intensive care units (ICUs) saying they have reached a breaking point,” he added. “I have to think of a personnel change to bring in people from other wings of the hospital.”
About 500 doctors and 950 nurses work at the OMPUH, which manages 832 beds. Ten of its 16 ICU beds have been dedicated to virus patients. Twenty of the 140 seriously ill patients admitted to the hospital died in the ICU.
Yasunori Komatsu, who runs the regional government workers ’union, said the conditions are dire for public health nurses to liaise between patients and local medical institutions in health centers.
“Some of them work 100, 150, 200 extra hours and that’s happening a year ago … on duty, sometimes they go home at two o’clock in the morning or two and go to bed to wake up. A phone call at three or four.”
Former Japanese-backed swimmer Aya Terakawa carried the Olympic torch last month through the Osaka Expo ’70 Memorial Park. There were no spectators as a result of the pandemic [Kyodo via Reuters]
Professional doctors with first-hand experience of the fight against the pandemic in Osaka have a negative view of the organization of the Tokyo Games from July 23 to August 8. Tokyo Medical Association he had already asked for the event to be canceled in view of the pressure on the city’s hospitals.
“The Olympics should be stopped because we have no longer stopped the flow of new variants from England, and the next may be the introduction of Indian variants,” said Dr Akira Takasu, head of emergency medicine at OMPUH.
He referred to A The first variant was found in India The World Health Organization (WHO) showed that it was easier to spread it after it was identified as a concern after initial studies.
“At the Olympics, 70,000 or 80,000 athletes and people from all over the world will come to this country. That could be the cause of another disaster this summer. “
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