OSAKA: The biggest problem in Japan is that nobody knows how widespread the COVID-19 outbreak has become when numbers no longer provide an accurate gauge of the situation.
With about 256 infected patients in Japan as of Mar 2, excluding those infected onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, these figures do not signal cause for alarm at first sight.
Yet, factor in the knowledge that Japan is not testing as much, one cannot escape the nauseating feeling the country has a much higher number of hidden cases waiting to bubble to the surface.
JAPAN IS STILL UNSURE HOW BAD THE OUTBREAK IS
South Korea has emerged the country with the highest number outside China, after infection cases skyrocketed last week. The country had come under fire for lax hospital rules on patient movement in the initial stages of the outbreak, leading to one super-spreader event at a Shincheonji church.
But South Korea has ramped up countermeasures including testing, making rapid diagnostic tests available at 50 healthcare facilities in the second week of February, with over 85,000 tested.
In contrast, Japan has administered a paltry number of 2,517 tests, which includes 829 tests of those extricated from Wuhan.
News of a man from Taiwan with symptoms, believed to have contracted the disease on his travel to Osaka from Feb 17 to 22, have fuelled criticism against what has been characterised as an overly cautious and insufficiently aggressive approach by Japanese officials, and growing concerns that opacity masks the true scale of the outbreak in the country.
Such suspicions are not helped by reports of doctors complaining that requests to test patients are frequently rejected by health centres and more of patients with pneumonia symptoms similarly turned down when they ask for the test.
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