The Japanese government decided Friday to introduce penalties for major hospitals that fail to provide outpatient care and prepare beds for patients with COVID-19 and other infectious diseases against prearrangements with local governments.
The government will also set penalties for people entering Japan with suspected infections who fail to report their health conditions when in isolation and establish an agency to act as a command center for responding to infectious diseases in fiscal 2023, it said.
"We will systematically set up a framework so that medical services will be provided for certain in the event of an emergency," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a coronavirus task force meeting at the prime minister's office in Tokyo.
The prime minister instructed attending ministers to prepare necessary legislation. The government aims to submit bills on amending the infectious diseases law to reflect the new policies on securing hospital beds and border control measures during an extraordinary parliamentary session expected to be called this fall.
The bill for creating an agency on infectious diseases crisis management will be submitted to parliament during its regular session next year, the government said.
Medical institutions to be subject to the new rules include those that provide advanced treatments as well as those that support local clinics.
If they sign agreements with prefectural governments on securing beds for patients with infectious diseases but fail to abide by them, they will lose their special designations and will not be eligible for preferential remuneration for medical services.
The new policies call for giving the central government the power to instruct manufacturers to produce medications and medical supplies and allowing people who are not doctors or nurses to take samples from people for testing or inoculate them.
In addition to the establishment of an agency to act as command center on infectious diseases, Japan will also set up an organization modeled after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in fiscal 2025 or later.
The comprehensive policies for infectious diseases were adopted as Japan eases border controls and seeks to live with the novel coronavirus without tight restrictions on social and economic activities.
The prefectures of Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tottori and Saga among Japan's 47 prefectures changed daily coronavirus reporting rules on Friday to focus only on cases involving the elderly and others at risk of developing severe symptoms in a bid to lessen the burden on medical institutions.
The move comes ahead of the central government's plan to apply the new rules across the country. Nagasaki is also set to join the four prefectures next week.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a regular news conference the change will "ease the burden of hospitals and enable efforts to be focused on protecting people who have developed severe symptoms."
The rule change was made after requests from governors and doctors amid a surge in the number of new COVID-19 cases in the seventh wave of infections.
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