How Japan survived covid-19 | The BMJ

How Japan survived covid-19 | The BMJ: The world’s third biggest economy seems to have emerged from the pandemic comparatively unscathed. Priyanka Borpujari speaks to health workers who survived the frontlines about how, and at what cost On 20 February 2020, the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 36 km south of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and turned into the world’s largest cluster of people infected with a new disease: covid-19.1 Hospitals in Yokohama had trouble admitting all the passengers, especially since many of them were in severely ill, needing mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The biggest challenge, says Norio Ohmagari, who leads research at the National Centre for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo, was the low number of available beds. “It was quite obvious that we could not accommodate all covid patients,” Ohmagari says. “The Tokyo governor requested private hospitals to accommodate them [70% of hospitals in Japan are privately run], but they were scared of this novel disease, with not much information, no vaccine, paucity of PPE [personal protective equipment], and no treatment.” “A national health crisis sadly cannot be separated from politicisation,” says Ke