I forced myself to read a longish, tedious article at Japan Media Highlights so you won’t have to. It addresses the interesting question of why Japan, a high-density country, has had relatively few Covid-19 deaths. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.
The short answer is that they’ve been housing an atypically large percentage of their long term care residents in actual acute care hospitals. Thus fewer live in euphemistically named “convalescent hospitals.”
A fair number of the Japanese elderly infirm live full-time in places where control of the spread of infectious agents is routine, everyday practice. Where issues of cross-contamination are considered a big deal and the wearing of PPE is routine, neither being common in nursing homes.
The author treats this as a quirk of the Japanese system. It is claimed Japan has too many acute care beds and uses the overflow to house long-term care patients.
Excess beds may be an inadvertent result of Japan’s shrinking population. Whatever the cause, it has worked out well for those oldsters so housed.
