Survey: Care Homes Struggle To Stop Spread Of Covid - 19
A new survey shows that many elderly Japanese people living in care homes could not be hospitalized when they were infected with the coronavirus this summer.
The social welfare council for care homes and nursing homes for elderly people in Tokyo conducted the survey online in September.
It asked such facilities about the spread of infection at their premises during the two months beginning July 1, this year.
Close to half of the homes in Tokyo, or 273 facilities, responded.
A total of 1,795 residents of 159 homes contracted COVID during that time. But only 299 of them were hospitalized while hospital beds were not found for 570 residents who needed them.
The survey also showed that a total of 1,489 staff members at 155 homes were infected.
The respondents were asked about hardships they encountered in dealing with the infection at their facilities.
The top answer was securing a sufficient number of staff, with 135 homes responding.
That was followed by 103 homes saying that finding hospitals to accept their sick residents was difficult.
About 30 percent, or 95 of the respondents, said that a cluster infection occurred as it was not easy for their residents to take precautions against infection.
Tsuruoka Tetsuya, a senior official on the council, said that the survey revealed how difficult it was to contain the spread as many sick residents were cared for at the facilities because they could not be hospitalized. He added that staff skills need to be improved to conduct more appropriate measures to contain infection.