The number of COVID-19 patients recuperating at home has not only reached record highs, but it has also more than doubled the health ministry’s earlier prediction.

The central and local governments have urged infected people at lower risk of developing severe symptoms to stay at home and monitor their health conditions by themselves.

Those instructions have led in part to more than 430,000 infected individuals recovering at home as of Feb. 2, a record high that is 3.3 times the peak figure during the fifth infection wave last summer.

Last autumn, the health ministry predicted the number of patients recuperating at home would reach a high of 180,000 in the next wave.

In the current sixth wave, the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has spread at a faster pace than the Delta strain in the fifth wave. But Omicron is also believed to be less likely than Delta to lead to serious symptoms.

Based on the characteristics of Omicron, the health ministry in January dropped its policy of trying to hospitalize all COVID-19 patients.

Instead, the new plan for the sixth wave is to focus medical resources on older people and others who are at a higher risk of developing severe symptoms.

SELF-RECUPERATION PROGRAM

Kanagawa Prefecture started a “self-recuperation” program ahead of other prefectures, targeting people aged between 6 and 49 who test positive through antigen and other tests and do not have any underlying condition that could cause them to become seriously ill.

Under the program, they enter their symptoms into the Line messaging app and check their health conditions by themselves.

If a health emergency arises, they can call the prefecture’s COVID-19 helpline to find available hospitals or clinics for treatment.

Previously, doctors and others were asked to report all positive COVID-19 tests to public health centers, and the cases were managed by those centers.

But for the “self-recuperating” cases, the positive-test reporting process is skipped to ease the burden on the centers.

Therefore, self-recuperating people in the prefecture are not considered “infected patients” under the infectious disease law, and they are not included in the tally of COVID-19 patients who are recovering at home.

The health ministry has tolerated the vague status of self-recuperating patients.

“I do not think there are issues that conflict with the infectious disease law,” health minister Shigeyuki Goto said at a Feb. 2 Diet session. “But we should discuss their legal status.”

Experts who advise the central government on anti-virus measures have also recommended that people self-recuperate at home in areas where the virus has spread widely.

EASING THE BURDEN

Hideaki Anan, Kanagawa Prefecture’s director in charge of medical crisis countermeasures, spoke of the need for self-recuperation.

“Public health centers can’t respond to non-coronavirus patients because it takes so much time finding hospitals for emergency infected patients,” he said. “The current health care system is under the most strain in two years. If the serious situation continues further, we will face difficulty in finding hospitals for elderly patients infected with the coronavirus, who should come first.

“Medical care providers and receivers could collapse together.”

Anan said increased self-recuperation at home would ease the burden on hospitals, and younger people can receive medical care more easily when they actually need it.

Under the Kanagawa Prefecture program, people can go to hospitals, take tests or self-recuperate.

The prefectural government issued registration papers for 3,653 people from Jan. 29 through Feb. 6 after they applied for the program. That number represents about 5 percent of all newly infected patients in the prefecture during the period.

“The Omicron variant is not so horrible for young and healthy people, compared to previous strains,” Anan said. “We would like them to understand that and to make efforts to increase the number (of self-recuperating patients).”

But he also raised some concerns about the program, including the lack of insurance benefits with the registration papers and the difficulty in obtaining COVID-19 test kits.

CHALLENGES IN TOKYO AND OSAKA

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Jan. 31. started asking patients under 50 years old with no underlying conditions to monitor their health status at home after they are checked by a doctor.

If they find something unusual about their health, they can call COVID-19 hotlines at any time. But on the morning of Jan. 31, hotline receptionists were able to take only about 30 percent of all incoming calls.

The Osaka prefectural government has also started to ask patients under 40 who are at low risk of developing severe symptoms to stay at home. The prefecture will send them an emergency contact number via a messaging app on their mobile phones in case their health condition deteriorates.

(This article was written by Yuki Edamatsu and senior staff writer Tokiko Tsuji.)