Photo/Illutration The Tokyo metropolitan government is lit in rainbow colors on June 2 as officials discuss whether an alert should be issued against the rising number of coronavirus cases. (Kazuhiro Nagashima)

The Tokyo metropolitan government dropped numerical criteria from its new guidelines on when it should issue a special alert to the public about a surge in new coronavirus cases.

The guidelines, which comprise seven points, took effect on July 1. They are based largely on the capacity of the health care system and assessments by health experts.

Under the previous guidelines, Tokyo should have requested businesses to close down again after the average daily number of new infections topped 50 over a week.

However, with an eye on re-energizing the economy, the metropolitan government does not plan to immediately issue the alert or ask businesses to shut down again.

“We aim to have prevention of the contagion’s spread and economic and social activities go together while taking necessary precautions,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said at a news conference on June 30.

The new guidelines will take into account the daily average number of requests over a week for consultations about fevers received by Tokyo’s Fire Department. This was added to the guidelines to gauge community infections.

“We have found that when the number of consultation requests goes up, it was followed by a rise in new cases,” Norio Omagari, director of the Disease Control and Prevention Center at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, said at a meeting of a metropolitan government task force on the COVID-19 outbreak.

The new guidelines will also follow the daily average for a week of cases in which emergency patients had to wait 20 minutes or longer to find a hospital that can accept them.

The waiting time for emergency patients can indicate how stretched the health care system is during a crisis.

The health experts will compare the findings concerning the seven points with those of the previous week as well as the peak figures when the capital was under the state of emergency until late May.

After the experts submit a report on the situation to the metropolitan government, officials will decide on whether an alert against a new wave of infections should be issued.

The alert would effectively be a warning to residents to avoid any unnecessary gatherings or trips outdoors.

But it envisages issuing the warning for a specific area of Tokyo, not the entire metropolis, depending on the analysis by the experts.

The metropolitan government lifted its request for business closures for all industries on June 19.

Before that date, the daily average of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases for a week topped 20, and the special alert was issued.

The daily total has recently increased, and the capital reported 67 new infection cases on July 1.

(This article was written by Yusuke Nagano and Rihito Karube.)

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