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Japan passed the grim benchmark of 50,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Dec. 1 amid a grim warning that more fatalities could be coming during the eighth wave of infections this winter.

A doctor in Tokyo blamed the pathogenicity of the novel coronavirus and the fragility of the medical care structure.

“We lost people who might have been saved if they had received care at a hospital,” said Kazuma Tashiro, 33, a doctor with the Hinata Homecare Clinic in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward.

The doctor had 44 patients who died during the sixth wave at the beginning of the year and the seventh wave in the summer as many could not find a hospital willing to take them in by ambulance.

The two waves accounted for about 30,000 deaths this year.

Tashiro feels that many hospitals are reluctant to accept patients because they might experience problems finding another medical institution to transfer the individual should serious symptoms develop.

“We have to more sincerely address the problem of the lives being lost,” Tashiro said.

About 95 percent of those who have died from COVID-19 were 60 or older, according to the health ministry.

With the first signs of an eighth wave appearing, daily death tallies in recent days have hit record levels in various parts of Japan. On Nov. 29, Hokkaido, Gunma and Tottori all reported record fatalities, while Miyagi Prefecture broke its daily record on Dec. 1.

Tashiro has seen about 100 patients succumb to COVID-19.

During the fifth wave of infections in summer 2021 when the highly virulent Delta variant was raging through the nation, even patients who developed serious symptoms were unable to find a bed at a hospital for proper medical care. Forty-six of the patients Tashiro saw died.

The first COVID-19 death was reported on Feb. 13, 2020. The 10,000-fatality benchmark was passed about 14 months later, but it only took another 10 months for that figure to double. The pace accelerated even further since mid-February, with only three to four months needed for another 10,000 deaths to be reported.

Hokkaido has seen a surge in recent months, with 585 deaths in November, a monthly record and about double the number of deaths in August, when the seventh wave was at its peak.

Hokkaido has tallied 10,000 new COVID-19 cases on some recent days as well as infection clusters in medical institutions and social welfare facilities.

(This article was written by Yusuke Nagano, Ryuzo Nakano and Ryujiro Komatsu.)

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