Economic revitalization minister Daishiro Yamagiwa, right, speaks at a meeting of the government's subcommittee on the coronavirus response on Nov. 8, 2021, in Tokyo. (Kyodo)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan will revise its criteria used to assess the COVID-19 situation, shifting focus to hospital capacity from the number of new infections, in line with the increase in the vaccination rate, government officials said Monday.
The new system, discussed during a meeting of the government's subcommittee on the novel coronavirus response, will also classify the situation according to five levels, up from the current four.
The alert levels have been used by the government in deciding whether to declare a state of emergency and by prefectural governments in deciding on what kind of measures to take against the virus.
The upgraded system will incorporate a projection of hospital bed availability and try to forecast earlier whether there may be a serious strain on the country's medical system in the wake of a resurgence of infections.
Economic revitalization minister Daishiro Yamagiwa, who is in charge of the government's COVID-19 response, said work has been under way to come up with new standards by mid-November.
"Based on today's discussions, we would like to prepare for a potential resurgence of infections by assuming a worst case scenario," Yamagiwa said at the meeting.
The move comes after a recent sharp fall in the number of serious COVID-19 patients in Japan with about 70 percent of the population now fully inoculated.
Under the five-phase scale of assessment, alert level 0 means maintaining a situation of no new COVID-19 cases while level 1 signifies the health care system is able to respond to COVID-19 in a stable manner.
Level 2 warns that an increase of infections is beginning to put a strain on the system while level 3 means a state of emergency is needed. Level 4 signifies that hospitals are no longer able to deal with COVID-19 patients even if they reduce general medical services.
Font Size S M L Print Timeline 0