Japan has kicked off a massive vaccination drive as hospitals buckle under a surge in COVID-19 cases. The military has set up centres in Tokyo and Osaka, offering thousands of shots each day, prioritising the elderly. Hospitals in Osaka, in the meantime, are running out of beds and ventilators. Doctors are advising against holding the Olympics this summer. But, the government headed by Yoshihide Suga is keen to go ahead with the games without spectators.
"We are prepared for no spectators," Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Japan Olympic Organizing Committee, said late last month, Bloomberg reports. With the Olympics, Japan hopes to recover from the setback its economy has faced due to the pandemic. However, going ahead with the games without local spectators might be a financial blow as consumption and spending by sponsors might be affected. There is, however, mounting pressure to call off the games.
Japan’s western region, which constitutes 7 per cent of the nation’s population, is currently suffering the fourth wave of the pandemic.
So far, only 50 per cent of Japan’s healthcare workers have been inoculated against the coronavirus and only 1.9 per cent of Japanese citizens have been vaccinated. Mass vaccination drives have been planned in cities-- Kobe and Nagoya. The government hopes to have inoculated everyone above the age of 65 by July.
“Simply put, this is a collapse of the medical system,” said Yuji Tohda, the director of Kindai University Hospital in Osaka told Reuters.
“The highly infectious British variant and slipping alertness have led to this explosive growth in the number of patients,” he added.
In last week, until Thursday, Osaka reported 3,849 new cases. Only 14 per cent of Osaka’s total cases have been hospitalised.
“I believe that until now many young people thought they were invincible. But that can't be the case this time around. Everyone is equally bearing the risk,” Dr Toshiaki Minami, the director of the Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital (OMPUH).
The country has so far recorded 700,000 infections and 12,000 deaths due to the virus.
Satsuki Nakayama, the head of the nursing department at OMPUH said that caring for critically ill patients have taken a toll on staff.
“I've got some intensive care unit staff saying they have reached a breaking point,” she said.
Yasunori Komatsu, who heads a union of regional government employees, said, “Some of them are racking up 100, 150, 200 hours of overtime, and that has been going on for a year now...when on duty, they sometimes go home at one or two in the morning and go to bed only to be awakened by a phone call at three or four”.
