The government decided to dispatch around 10 nurses from the Self-Defense Forces to two medical facilities in Asahikawa in Hokkaido, as the city faces a shortage of health care workers due to a recent spike in coronavirus infections, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Tuesday.
Large cities in Hokkaido as well as urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka have been seeing a rise in coronavirus infections since October and their hospital beds and lodging facilities provided for patients have been increasingly occupied, raising concerns about a possible collapse of the health care system.
Japan on Tuesday saw a record 47 coronavirus deaths, raising the country's death toll to 2,458.