Photo/Illutration Crowds of evening commuters head toward Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Jan. 13. (Hiroyuki Yamamoto)

The Tokyo metropolitan government will use the hospital bed occupancy rate as the decisive barometer on whether to ask the central government to impose stricter measures against the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus.

“Stop infections, but don’t stop society. We need to do both,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said at a news conference after the metropolitan government’s COVID-19 monitoring meeting on Jan. 13.

The new policy will emphasize a balance between infection-prevention measures and economic activities.

The metropolitan government will ask the central government for pre-emergency measures if the hospital bed usage rate reaches 20 percent in the capital. It will request a declaration of a state of emergency if the ratio hits 50 percent.

As of Jan. 13, the capital’s occupancy rate of hospital beds was 15.1 percent.

Previously, the metropolitan government had said that it would ask bars and restaurants to limit customer numbers if the hospital bed usage rate was expected to reach 20 percent three weeks later.

These businesses would be asked to shorten their operating hours if the daily average of new infections over one week exceeded 700.

The daily average number of newly infected people has recently topped 700.

But metropolitan government officials said these barometers were set in response to the Delta variant.

The impact of the Omicron variant on the hospital bed usage rate remains unknown, and officials are having difficulties in predicting the occupancy rate three weeks later.

The capital logged 3,124 new infection cases on Jan. 13, topping 3,000 for the first time since Sept. 2.

At the Jan. 13 meeting, experts said “social activities might be forced to be halted” in Tokyo, noting that the daily average of new infection cases had increased by about eight times from the figure for the previous week due to the Omicron variant.

If that pace continues, the number of new infections per day will reach 9,500 on Jan. 20, the experts said.

As of Jan. 13, COVID-19 patients were occupying 1,056 of the 6,919 secured hospital beds in Tokyo. Four of the patients had severe symptoms.

“It is possible that a crunch in medical resources occurs quickly,” Koike said.

OSAKA RELUCTANT TO STRENGTHEN MEASURES

In Osaka Prefecture, 2,452 new infection cases were confirmed on Jan. 13, about five times the number on the previous Thursday.

But the number of patients who developed severe symptoms and were hospitalized was just six, and only 1 percent of the hospital beds for such patients were occupied.

There were 706 patients with mild or moderate symptoms, occupying 23 percent of the hospital beds for this category.

Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura remains cautious about asking the central government to issue pre-emergency measures or a state of emergency in the prefecture.

“The number of seriously ill patients, the rate of developing severe symptoms and the availability of hospital beds are the most important factors,” Yoshimura said.

He has yet to explain the barometer for seeking stricter measures from the central government.

(This article was written by Shin Kasahara and Yuki Kubota.)

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