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More than 90% of Tokyo hospital beds for COVID-19 patients filled

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So this shows how unprepared Tokyo is although they have had months to prepare for this. People praising Koike should think twice before doing so as she should have prepared some purpose built facilities for covid 19 patients. Japan seems to have been lucky so far that the numbers are so low.

9 ( +11 / -2 )

90% figure is probably closer to 100% in reality; hospitals are reserving beds for more profitable and easily-treatable patients, since infectious patients consume PPE resources and require many more staff.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

"There is a possibility that the virus will spread further. It is necessary to bring closer the number of beds from 2,000 to such target quickly," a Health Ministry official told Reuters.

It is virtually guaranteed that the virus will spread further. Stop playing with words and face up to the reality of the situation that you bureaucrats/officials have created,

5 ( +8 / -3 )

2000 beds...reserved for COVID patients. Tokyo has thousands more beds than this. Officials are merely choosing to set aside a few specifically for one purpose, and they can double the number set aside without too much difficulty.

This article seems written to scare people, but it could just as easily be written to say that officials are managing resources based on the current number of cases and the assumption that numbers won’t spike during the current emergency measures.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Ok, that's informative, I like to know what is the next steps for making more beds available

only 10% left for who, I need to hear how many more beds will be in development, not only 10% left,

This story is a nightmare, not a news.

3 ( +8 / -5 )

Does anyone know a good site to monitor COVID19? Too many sites and news agencies have conflicting information. I see all the bad news but why can't anyone report that according to Japan COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker active cases are DOWN (not up) to 6582 cases and dropping on a daily bases. This is good news isn't it. Also, two weeks ago Tokyo hospitals was at almost 200% and today stating 90%. Again, isn't this good news? There are so many other positive stories out there. Would love to see more on SNS.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

@since1981 the media generally only reports the bad news these days.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Fiddlers, I don’t know if you are up to date with what the problem on the ground is and why they have the approach they have, it’s so easy to say build more facilities, qualified professionals must man them, what they are doing now is using hotels for those with mild symptoms and reserving hospital “ICU” beds for infectious diseases for those who will develop lung disease, ICU’s in Tokyo have to serve other illness too, so not wise to reserve too many to deprive other people who need them too at any given time, remember hospital treatment facilities for serious covid 19 patients are run separately from other illnesses, there has been a lot of programs on this issue on tv recently

3 ( +3 / -0 )

That is an extremely low level of beds... almost worse than Italy. With all the money you and the government pays for health care. Patients without symptoms can stay home, anyway, since it is not a lethal virus. Only people with other pathologies are at risks. Numbers have been inflated beyond reality, particularly abroad. It is not by chance that Japan has barely 5-600 deaths (more than 90% of whom well beyond 70-80 years old).

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Perhaps the article title should read "Tokyo beds available DOWN from 180% to 90% from two weeks ago".

2 ( +4 / -2 )

As long as the new cases remain low those beds won't be necessary.

The steps taken are working, the numbers of new infected and the numbers of death show that.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

These are beds that are specifically allocated for Corvid-19 patients..... They can increase this number at anytime. The biggest problem being that hospitals and clinics will LOSE money if they allocate beds. Their other business drops as “regular” patients will go to other facilities rather than the “virus” hospital.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

she should have prepared some purpose built facilities for covid 19 patients. 

Ideally, of course. The problem then would be who will be manning said facilities.

The best they could probably do at the moment would be to boost the number of beds at each facility that treats covid19 or convert some facilities to wholly treat covid19 only if that's possible.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

The article gave figures of nationwide beds reserved for covid 19 patients who will develop lung disease and the percentage occupied as of now was 38%, Tokyo is over 90% and it states provisions are in place to boost that no. to 4000.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Since 1981, there is a specific app for Tokyo called covid 19 that’s what I use, very informative, I guess there are other ones for other prefectures, search for them in the app stores, good luck

1 ( +2 / -1 )

So not really prepared for the Olymipcs.. Oh they are postponed that's a lucky break. Don't have enough beds for Japanese certainally don't have enough for foreign people or the required straps to hold them down. That's lucky.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Marie Antoinette Redux says: Let them use futons

1 ( +1 / -0 )

i@n You should read the stopcovid19 website properly. There are no stats there regarding number of patients versus number of beds.

You are interpreting the number of people testing positive as the number of beds which is nonsensical.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@i@n I quote your own comment:

As of yesterday, May 10, occupancy is 2518/4800 or 52.4%.

source: stopcovid19.jp

There is no such thing on this website. There is no stats regarding occupancy. That number "4800" (now 4868) is the number of cases. It has nothing to do with beds.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@fillmore. The article clearly addresses your concern. Go back and read it.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Only 1832 beds for a country of 127 million?

The ministry said 1,832 COVID-19 patients were hospitalised in the capital

0 ( +0 / -0 )

April 28, or 91.6 percent of the 2,000 beds made available for such patients.

Since April 28, over 4500 patients have been discharged nationwide

There are the same number of active casers nationwide now as there were on april 4th.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

90% ??????, hospital is full at 1000%. you got more risk to catch a disease in Japanese hospital than in your house. Do not forget, old people are priority here....

0 ( +1 / -1 )

since1981Today  07:46 am JST

Does anyone know a good site to monitor COVID19? Too many sites and news agencies have conflicting information. I see all the bad news but why can't anyone report that according to Japan COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker active cases are DOWN (not up) to 6582 cases and dropping on a daily bases. This is good news isn't it. Also, two weeks ago Tokyo hospitals was at almost 200% and today stating 90%. Again, isn't this good news? There are so many other positive stories out there. Would love to see more on SNS.

Yes. This is an absolutely brilliant site for raw data.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Does anyone know a good site to monitor COVID19? Too many sites and news agencies have conflicting information. I see all the bad news but why can't anyone report that according to Japan COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker active cases are DOWN (not up) to 6582 cases and dropping on a daily bases. This is good news isn't it. Also, two weeks ago Tokyo hospitals was at almost 200% and today stating 90%. Again, isn't this good news? There are so many other positive stories out there. Would love to see more on SNS.

https://toyokeizai.net/sp/visual/tko/covid19/en.html

This is the official data, I think. But it's a few days behind.

https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/

Has data for Tokyo, but they don't show the active cases here.

I would think Tokyo would have a greater proportion of tests done, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

These are beds that are specifically allocated for Corvid-19 patients..... They can increase this number at anytime.

I agree. The hospitals maybe/should be continually readying beds for covid19. Even now there could be a lot more beds that are already covid19-ready but have not been exclusively allotted to it yet

0 ( +0 / -0 )

“the required straps to hold them down”

I was about to laugh, I caught myself though...

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It's warmer weather now, why not build a temp. pre-fab hospital only for testing/admitting COVID 19 patients.

Direct ambulances there.

Govt. must have some stray tax funds lying around somewhere?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

At this stage in the epidemic, where we don't clearly know the ratio of infected to diagnosed and where testing is still ramping up, excess deaths are the most reliable statistic for how bad things are.

The US now has a great site where you can see nationally or by state. Hopefully Japan will have one soon.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This is also a useful tool. Japan needs to copy this:

https://healthweather.us/?mode=Observed

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Yup that's my comment alright, pulled the figures right from the website.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

i@n

Yup that's my comment alright, pulled the figures right from the website.

Unfortunately, you appear to be misinterpreting them.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I wasn't even interpreting them, that's why I said i just pulled them.

They're not even the same number

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The case numbers are surely fake as Japan is outrageously only testing 1.82 people out of 1000 people! The real numbers could be 10X what the media are reporting as Abe has intentionally limited testing to cover up the real spreading. Anyone who lives here knows that the TV channels are highly politically biased and can’t be trusted.

This story on number of beds is a distraction to the real news.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Personally I don't want to participate in discussions that begin with " the real number of cases must/could be 5x, 10x, 100x etc of the real numbers" because people are just pulling out arbitrary multipliers out of their asses, no basis at all.

So I suggest that people who want to rant about this to look at the data for the number of people who called the covid testing hotlines. Let's assume that all who called should be tested.

So if the number of those rejected/denied testing is 5x those tested then we can say the number of cases could 5x. If the number of rejected is 10x then we can say 10x.

Is that ok?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Math is flawed, it should be 6x and 11x respectively

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Burning bush, please read the article thoroughly before commenting

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Mr. Q or Mr. P,

article does not address my concerns, with over 100M in Japan, those numbers are far off,

read my comments again,

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

The ministry said 1,832 COVID-19 patients were hospitalised in the capital as of April 28, or 91.6 percent of the 2,000 beds made available for such patients.

Info for this article is outdated.

As of yesterday, May 10, occupancy is 2518/4800 or 52.4%.

source: stopcovid19.jp

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Is it just fear mongering?

They used old data so they can have that headline. Bed utilization for Tokyo as of yesterday was 2518/4800 or 52.4%.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Let’s keep sweeping everything under the carpet and carry on with our normal lives.しょうがないね!

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

About 2000 beds for a metropolis with 37.5 million people? Moronic.

"Theres a possibility the virus will spread"? You serious or just stupid? Look at other countries.

Do people fail upwards in Japan? It certainly seems so.

Get Koike as the PM. As a man I will say that mens time of being in positions of power is over.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

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