Photo/Illutration Nurses at Osaka Gyomeikan Hospital help treat a COVID-19 patient with serious symptoms. (Provided by Osaka Gyomeikan Hospital)

OSAKA—The health care system in Osaka Prefecture is now in such a critical situation that hospitals fear they may soon have to turn away seriously ill COVID-19 patients.

There are now more patients with severe symptoms than the number of available hospital beds for their treatment in the prefecture.

The prefecture has squeaked by after some medical institutions initially designated to treat those with minor or medium symptoms were forced to treat patients with serious symptoms because no other facility was willing to take them in.

Exasperating the crisis is a chronic shortage of nurses.

One facility in Osaka city’s Sumiyoshi Ward that opened in December 2020 specifically to treat patients with serious symptoms has 30 hospital beds. But it can use only 16 of them because of the lack of medical personnel.

To fully operate all 30 beds would require 120 nurses, but the facility had only 72 as of April 14.

Attendees at a prefectural government task force meeting on April 14 agreed that the health care system had gone beyond a “tight situation” to “a crisis in treating patients with serious symptoms.”

Osaka Prefecture confirmed a record 1,130 new COVID-19 cases the same day, the second straight day of more than 1,000 newly confirmed infections.

The prefectural government has set aside 232 hospital beds for those with serious symptoms.

On April 14, there were 219 patients in hospitals for those with serious symptoms, but 20 others were being treated in facilities that should only be handling those with less serious symptoms.

That means a total of 239 seriously ill patients are being treated, seven above the capacity set by the prefectural government.

On March 18, Osaka Prefecture had only 54 patients with serious symptoms, but in about a month’s time, the number jumped by 185.

In comparison, it took about three months for the number of patients with serious symptoms to increase by 170 in the prefecture during the third wave of COVID-19 between October 2020 and February, according to an analysis by the Osaka prefectural government.

The spread of COVID-19 variants is believed to be behind the fourfold acceleration in cases in the current fourth wave.

“There has been an effect from the variant strains,” Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said at his April 14 news conference, referring to the hospital bed situation. “The pace of new infections has quickened, and more patients are prone to develop serious symptoms.”

An official at one hospital close to capacity on April 14 for those with serious symptoms had a grim outlook if the prefecture cannot control the spread of the virus.

“Unless the number of new cases decreases, we will reach a stage where we will have to decide which patient can be saved and which cannot,” the official said.

The situation is also affecting facilities designed to treat patients with less serious symptoms because additional personnel are needed to take care of patients with serious symptoms.

Osaka Gyomeikan Hospital in Konohana Ward has set aside 17 beds for patients with minor symptoms. But on April 9 one of the patients developed more serious symptoms, and the hospital could not find another facility that would accept the patient as of April 13.

Osaka Gyomeikan Hospital, in fact, has temporarily stopped accepting patients with minor symptoms because it needs more nurses to help treat those whose conditions worsen.

An official with the organization managing the hospital said: “If we are unable to transfer patients with serious symptoms, we may become unable to save lives that might have been saved.

If we cannot look after those with minor symptoms because of a lack of staff, the medical care structure will collapse.”

(Shohei Sasagawa and Taichi Kobayashi contributed to this article.)

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