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© Thomson Reuters 2020.Japan, faced with criticism, scrambles to do more coronavirus testing
By Kiyoshi Takenaka©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
54 Comments
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Christopher Glen
Too late, as usual. By about 2 months this time
Michael Machida
So, Japan does nothing until its crit·i·cized? Scrambles to do testing? Japanese people never scramble to do anything. They think it over for a long time and never do they scramble. Who wrote this?
oldman_13
Who cares, open up the world already. The world economy has taken enough damage.
Qwert
O—————kay then....Better late than never
Disillusioned
Gotta keep those statistics low for the world stage hence, no increased testing.
Michael Kim
Another big problem Japanese government will face is the criticism other nations will raise over Japan's poor performance.
Soon other nations will control it, And Japan will become problem for those nations to keep it controlled. Most likely Japan will be isolated from many nations.
Cricky
It's been 3 months more warning and now other then testing "Special" people the LDP have decided to (under pressure) to conform to a world standard that actually includes the citizens? That's got to hurt. Fancy that it's not enough we can afford cup noddles a test is really pushing it.
HBJ
Yeah, who cares there's a deadly virus out there, that's highly contagious, and we don't currently have a vaccine for? Inconveniencing economies for as long as it takes to maximize people's safety, is a small price to pay.
I guess you haven't been personally affected by this virus yet. I hope you never are - it's not nice.
carpslidy
The government is smart, now numbers a
carpslidy
The government is slow but smart, now numbers are going down and flu season is finished, relax the criteria, as overall the number of tests may not change even under these new criteria.
Secondly, if numbers go up again just blame it on the new criteria, that way people don't panic and the government won't have to shut down the economy.
Alfie Noakes
Dr. Shigeru Omi is the President of the Japan Community Health Care Organization and the chairman of the experts panel advising the government. He has complained about "bureaucracy" being the cause of the testing failure.
Not even the top man can do anything about it. What a sclerotic shambles this has become.
Jo Candelario
It’s says a month ago, but still many residents in Tokyo never got faced mask.
Ken Holcomb
You can bet that just like in the US, the senior Japanese pols and uber rich are getting tested - frequently.
Unfortunately for the US Pumpkin Headed President and his Snow White Dwarf VP, they didn't bother testing the lowly valets, staffers and other lowlifes around them, who are now testing positive, after having been in very close proximity to both, uh, "leaders"?, without masks or practicing social distancing.
Arrogance and ignorance rules the ruling parties.
Roger Jolly
I do not understand all this hype about the tests... if they do not have the chemical and the manpower to do them? Besides, hospitals are not packed with sick people and nobody is lining up waiting their number to die. Why people is so concerned? Don't you folks see the differences between here and abroad? Why do you wanna be like the others... with all their problems...?
Ricky Kaminski13
Buying time in the usual fashion. Still not sure if it is either incredibly stupid due to systemic level incompetency OR incredibly brilliant due to high level resolve and strategic genius by those who have made the hard decisions other nations couldn’t. The body language of the PM doesn't however suggest the latter.
Japan has not been hit by the bus yet so something is holding. Time will indeed tell. This is a long hall situation. Must say one thing, it's been lovely to see young kids out in the fields helping grandma and granddad planting the rice and toiling the land. A reset button for the whole nation to reconsider whats really important in life.
MaikuC
The Japanese government has shown time and time again it needs to be pushed to wake up and act. Is the Japanese government too obese with corruption and cronyism? Had the ruling party been in power without any accountability for too long and is complacent?
hotelstar
@Roger Jolly, hospitals are not packed with sick people.
Exactly! All these mentions about cover up and under testing, maybe, but if the morgues were full we would know about it.
Easy to criticize a government, with hindsight. I would have lived the perfect life with no mistakes, with hindsight.
Unless you're from Scandinavia (who's citizens have not bought into the hysteria) or a handful of other small states, not too much to look up to in regards to government adequacy.
For a population of 126.5 million, I think japan has done well under the circumstances. Could they have done better? Of course.
SJ
Japan can do mass testing at anytime by automatizing the PRC test process. Please enlighten me as to why they did not and do not yet.
change.org/PCR_researcher
secretsquirrel
@oldman_13 I don’t care that you don’t care because yours is the minority view. Thankfully the future of Japan does not depend on people of our age.
spinningplates
I'm paraphrasing of course but....
On one hand they say...'we can't test, we don't have the resources'.
Then in same article they continue..'we can begin as soon as they are approved.'
Finally the death knell for antigen testing...'We need to think about utilizing them.'
Those hailing the 'plan' to re-open, it's obvious there is no plan. No grand strategy. Japan continues to fumble in the darkness, squirming to find a way to avoid paying salary compensation.
noriahojanen
Testing has little to do with substantial health care treatment. Many active testing countries have higher death tolls (causality may be reversed). By contrast, Thailand has a fewer number of testing than Japan, and fewer number of deaths (per 1 million people).
Also beware of the reliability problem: PCR testing has 60-70% accuracy. False results in both negative and positive sides without other inquires for diagnosis could jeopardize the overall response strategy.
noriahojanen
In a recent report, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Imperial College London, recommends a targeted testing only for key groups (patients, medical staff and high risk community members) instead of widespread, random and near compulsory testing to general population. The Centre is collaborating with the WHO.
Report 16 - Role of testing in COVID-19 control
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-16-testing/
From its summary:
Dangerousjisan
The morgues are full! Just that you don’t know it......yet.
Xeno Man
I slightly disagree with this statement at an aspect.
China actually covers up way way better than Japan. The Chinese brought the entire WHO and forced every medical academic except the USA to buy up their craps. Of course, the Chinese did mass testings but the efficiency is not proven. China still critically lacks components to mass produce the testing kits. Other word, the CCP has to sacrifice few hundred of thousands or even a million to save face. The Chinese government has been covering up and fixing up their mistakes spectacularly. China still has the plague, and we aren't sure how bad it is going inside China.
Meanwhile, Japan sucks at covering up and fixing the mistakes. Japanese government pulls up the Nihonjiron politeness to get away with most of the bad things on the international stages. In recent years, they can't do it anymore as Western news outlets begin criticizing Japan on social issues like women's rights, inequality, unfair trade practices,... The Covid-19 exposes the weaknesses of Japan's government and international criticisms mounting everyday. The Pandemic may be an opportunity for the Western journalists prying and exposing the incompetence of Japanese system. China and Japan are on different level, which China is the superior. Japan's Abe wishes to be like the CCP but LDP cronies are too incompetent to do so.
drlucifer
Reasons given are always conflicting and changing like the autumn weather. Didn't they complain of lack of personel and also lack of beds prior to hotels being secured to accomodate mild cases.
Most hospitals are scared of in-hospital infection and will give any reason not to do or admit those with virus like symptoms.
PCR test will not increase if the roles that the health centers play is not reduced, they are understaffed and presently overstretched, the entire burden on the health centers. Increasing testing would mean more work for the hokenjos. It is just natural that they will turn down most test request.
drlucifer
Spot on.
You are a rare Japanese.
vanityofvanities
Japanese government systematically does not have a strong power like other countries. Japan became too much democratic and the government became too weak. They cannot enforce strong decisions upon people. As a result, every thing is slow and half done. A good example, they took 30 or more years to build the Narita Airport.
Triring
Inaccurate testing of only 60-70% accuracy will only bring more confusion and distrust towards the government as well as the test itself.
Statistically speaking with the amount of fatalities as the denominator with the average fatality rate you can deduct the potential infection number or the numerator but most doomsdaysayers just won't accept the math.
Whatsnext
This is absolute bull. This will only be used to reinforce a lockdown once stay at home order is lifted. It will inflate the numbers and the media will scream bloody murder and drag the economy further through the dirt.
I have faith in the Japanese people and they will see through this scam. They already are. Gigs up bill gates
noriahojanen
@zichi
At least, ventilators and ECMOs are sufficiently available while the number of seriously ill patients are decreasing in Tokyo as well as nationwide in Japan. It's said there are 3,000 ventilators available, of which only 237 are used as of today.
COVID-19 重症患者状況 日本COVID-19対策ECMOnet集計
https://covid19.jsicm.org/
jojobird
I am truly disappointed by the J Gov’s response.
I am also confused on so many levels.
too little, too late.
InspectorGadget
I'm looking forward to going though the end of year population stats which are publicised annually. Eg. we have 125 million people, which is a reduction of X number on last year in the following demographics.
If there is a sudden drop in the population over and above the number expected, and that doesn't tally with the official number of deaths due to Covid-19 . . . . . what else with the government blame it on?
vanityofvanities
Famous Japanese people who died of the coronavirus are hospitalized at best hospitals in Tokyo. They probably were administered ventilators (ECMO). But they died. I suspect ECMO killed them.
i@n
Even now they are probably already chalking up the deaths due to pneumonia but untested to "possible covid19 deaths"
"Untested" means untested only for sars-cov-2, the patients were more likely have been tested for other likely causes.
RationalReader
The panic around this virus is irrational & hysterical.
In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.
Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
If we help the old and the sick to self-isolate, the rest of us can get on with our lives.
lesenfant
@RationalReader
NOT irrational. It is completely new and the long term effects of infection are still unknown. There's reports in America of a mid 30s perfectly healthy scuba diver loving male having a mild case of covid, then after recovering an Xray showed his lungs had so much damage caused they can never scuba dive ever again.
Still so many unknowns.
Tom
@Rational. I am well read as well and in total agreement.
@lesenfart. Long term effects of all new and tested drugs are the same. What was the health background of the scuba diver and his family? You do not know, so please stop with there was one guy...kind of stuff.
I think economic issues should be ignored and open up everything. There is more to life than sitting in a room and ordering pizza delivery.
smithinjapan
Japanese Government: "We have thought long and hard about this, formed numerous panels, and spent millions of yen hiring the nation's top retired shachos to discuss doing something, and after spending months coming to the conclusion that time is something we don't have in a pandemic, we have concluded that something should be done. Yes, it's true, at America's behest we have rammed through permission to begin using an untested drug, but more than that we have decided we shall no longer require ten days on death's door before getting a test -- it will now be 9.75 days, and inside the entrance, not the door. No longer will a fever of 37.5 degrees for four days be necessary to receive permission to seek the means to wait for a test, but realising that even among Japanese, with our unique body temperatures, some people have higher temperatures than average, and so we have decided that 37.4 degrees for four days but only three nights will suffice before waiting 9.75 days. Until then, please use the masks graciously provided by our Prime Minister when they arrive at the lifting of the emergency declaration (picking out any insect larvae and/or human or animal hairs), and avoid all circumstances that would put people in close proximity to each other, except at banks, supermarkets, commuter trains, offices, city halls, and other such venues that the virus has agreed to leave us alone at. We are going to hold a very important press conference to announce further information on an announcement at a date to be announced at said conference."
drlucifer
Smith
You made my day.
Need stuff like this to lighten us up
While on our endless wait for the 2 mask and 100K from dear leader.
Vinke
@hotelstar
Um, would you care to elaborate a little? What do you mean by 'hysteria' exactly, reg. Scandinavia?
And surely you have know Scandinavia consists of several countries, and each country has had very different approaches to the virus, depending on the country? Reading the rest of your message though, I have a strong feeling that to you, perhaps Sweden alone = Scandinavia.
Sweden is hitting very high numbers with covid-19 cases and covid-19 deaths, as they have not controlled pretty much anything, whereas e.g. Norway and Finland are doing much better in constraining/slowing down the spread of the virus, exactly BECAUSE they've had rather tough restrictions in place. And yes, these restrictions are just common sense, not hysteria.
"The head of Sweden's coronavirus response said in a new interview that the country's high death toll had "come as a surprise" and was "really something we worry a lot about.""
(https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-lockdown-chief-says-high-death-toll-was-surprise-2020-5)
P.S. I'm Scandi living in Japan myself, so I know what I'm talking about.
macv
japanese go'v incapable of quick response get rid of the old geezers time for revolution now
Fanny Greene
In other news they are scrambling at the pedestrian walk in Shibuya too ;)
Lorem ipsum
Hey, you left out Denmark!
El Rata
Enough of this testing nonsense already! Like if testing was going to stop the spread of the illness. Open up the country, I rather die free than live like this! If you're worried a lot, you stay home then, don't worry about others.