1st community spread of Omicron virus variant in Tokyo confirmed

Why is the doc hospitalized? What are his symptoms?

Why do they keep insisting on hospitalizing these early omicron cases if symptoms are not severe?

Japan is going to find a lot more case's when they actually start doing some serious testing. Canada does 6 time's the testing per capita than Japan. Canada has a higher percentage of people immunized than Japan. Because of actual testing they are finding that many Canadians have covid. Yesterday Canada reported 21,000 case's, Japan a couple hundred, give me a break. Start testing Japan.!

30,000 free tests in Tokyo, but I have to spend over 300$ at the airport to get a PCR and certificate just to go see a terminally ill family member next week. Fun.

Tokyo Gov Yuriko Koike told a press conference that the doctor had worn a face mask and face guard at work, and that patients at the clinic had not come into close contact with the doctor.

Huh? - anyone who has been to a clinic here knows full well the rooms are tiny and you are sitting within 2 feet of the doctor, and if he/she is examining you then of course we are talking inches.

At the start of the pandemic I was absolutely in the “test more” camp, but now much less so. You look at some countries that are testing hundreds of thousands (millions?) of asymptomatic people per day and I really wonder what the point is. It is an incredible cost and seems to be of little benefit. Hysterical reporting of positive test numbers fuels the panic and then we see poorly considered reactionary policy.

We seem to have got testing right here - even if it is entirely by accident.

“Why do they keep insisting on hospitalizing these early omicron cases if symptoms are not severe?”

I think that would make monitoring something new easier.

Start testing Japan.!

Complete waste of time and resources right there. Glad people like you aren't in charge of things.

Koike said Tokyo will conduct free COVID-19 tests from Saturday amid growing worries over the variant. It is planning to conduct 30,000 tests per day for those wishing to be tested at 180 locations in the capital, she added.

Who the heck would want to get tested when the reward is a 14 day quarantine at a hospital?! Japan isn't incentiving people to get tested. They are scaring people into the exact opposite.

Who the heck would want to get tested when the reward is a 14 day quarantine at a hospital?! Japan isn't incentiving people to get tested. They are scaring people into the exact opposite.

exactly the point - Japan from the beginning has never been interested in finding out the actual number of infected people - this has why they have always and continue to make it difficult and costly to get tested.

A very irresponsible doctor.

The media should not be hiding this

You mean the information that you got from the media? that would be the opposite of hiding something.

Complete waste of time and resources right there

The opposite, the experts coincide in considering widespread testing the best way to actually understand how the transmission is developing and acting opportunely before people start dying.

Given that by all indications this virus is pretty mild, it's likely a good idea to let it go and let people build natural immunity. 

The opposite, it is a terrible idea and that is why the doctors and scientists of the world say you are terribly mistaken and that nobody should listen to you.

And people who are worried about getting infected can take whatever precautions they see fit without infringing on everyone else. Seems pretty reasonable.

As "reasonable" as people worried about lung cancer letting smokers do it everywhere, or people that worry about traffic accidents from people DUI only taking precautions themselves and letting others drink and drive.

This do not work when people make personal choices with an effect on others, in that case "letting people do as they want" is a demonstrably much worse option.

Time for another SOE guys every one work from home please and restaurant all cloudy 8pm and no alcohol. This is how they brought the infection rate down to the 20 a day.

Here we go, we all been here before, so lets not panic or drop our guards and we will beat this new monster.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy Nee year!!!

Testing even benign strains is good to monitor and understand the strain's behaviour, but slow expensive PCR should have demoted to a tertiary confirmation stage a year ago.

Breathalysers (preferably strain-sensitive terahertz, but VOC would do) should have been the first line since mid-2020.

Breathalysers (preferably strain-sensitive terahertz, but VOC would do) should have been the first line since mid-2020.

Lower sensitivity for screening methods? that is the opposite of what should be done. All the false negatives are left untested by any other methods and the tested person is only left with a mistaken negative result

That is the reason why PCR remains the gold standard for screening. Artificially making it expensive is not an inherent flaw of the test.

Who the heck would want to get tested when the reward is a 14 day quarantine at a hospital?!

Do they compensate loss of earnings?