Photo/Illutration People wait to take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test in Naha on Jan. 9. (Minako Yoshimoto)

Some COVID-19 patients in Okinawa Prefecture are sleeping in cars to avoid infecting their family members, but they are putting themselves at risk of developing life-threatening illnesses from “economy-class syndrome,” officials said.

The Okinawa prefectural government secured 852 hotel rooms for infected individuals and has made arrangements for additional accommodations.

But they have been unable to keep pace with the recent surge in infections, particularly the highly contagious Omicron variant, across the prefecture.

As of Jan. 10, 60 to 70 percent of the available hotel rooms were occupied, and 3,640 COVID-19 patients were staying at home in the prefecture.

A team set up within the prefecture’s pandemic response headquarters to monitor the health of stay-at-home patients found that some of them “are staying in vehicles over fears of spreading the virus.”

“It would be preferable if they could stay at a hotel, but rooms have not been prepared, and we feel guilty about this,” a prefectural government official said.

The prefecture has asked these patients to go to a more comfortable environment at their homes because remaining in such cramped conditions can lead to pulmonary embolic disease.

“The novel coronavirus can damage vascular endothelium, and patients are likely to suffer a blood clot,” Kazuhiko Hanzawa, a special-appointment professor in vascular surgery at Niigata University, said. “There are strong concerns that they could develop economy-class syndrome, and it is dangerous.”

(This article was written by Kei Yoshida and Hiromi Kumai.)

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