Hospitals in the main island of Okinawa, which are responding to the new corona, do not have enough beds dedicated to corona, and are using beds for other general diseases to deal with the rapidly increasing number of inpatients.
Experts have revealed that the situation continues to decide who to hospitalize by "triaging" to determine priorities based on urgency.
In the main island of Okinawa, there are no vacancies in the hospital beds dedicated to the new corona this week, and the bed occupancy rate continues to exceed 100%.
Terutake Yonemori, director of the emergency and emergency center at Urasoe General Hospital, who is one of the prefecture's medical coordinators and is responsible for coordinating hospitalization, said, "We can't afford the corona ward anymore, and people with different diseases should be admitted. Every medical institution is using the beds in the ward to accommodate the corona patients."
On top of that, he clarified that the situation continues where there is no choice but to decide who to hospitalize by applying "triage" to determine the priority based on the urgency.
As a result of the number of general hospital beds being taken up by the number of corona beds, Dr. Yonemori said, "Since the beginning of this month, both the wards and the beds that accommodate emergency patients have been full, and it has happened that we cannot receive ambulances. Even if you manage to get it, waiting for 15 or 20 minutes in an ambulance that stops at the entrance of the emergency room is happening with both corona and non-corona diseases."
Dr. Yonemori indicated that if economic activities are to continue while infections continue, it is necessary to spread the burden by increasing the number of hospitals and clinics that can handle corona.