Kirk again. In response to my post about the record high number of positives recorded today, Megan raised the issue of hospital beds. This is an important point that was mentioned in what I saw on RKK but that I forgot to mention in my post. I looked on the web and found a KKT report that’s relevant. I’ve attached the URL and the images are from that report. First, the bar chart shows how the numbers have increased recently. Last week, the vice-governor who usually does the press conferences (sorry, I forgot his name) said that they were prepared to deal with numbers of up to 250. So, 271 “exceeds expectations” – the term 想定外 (souteigai; outside of the expected range) in the next image. The “51.5%” you see on the first imaged refers to the percentage of hospital beds reserved for COVID-19 cases that are already occupied. This number is for the prefecture as a whole and 68.1% is for Kumamoto City (where more than half of the cases are occurring).
The second pie chart shows the ages of the people contracting the virus (clockwise: 10 to 19, 20s, 30s, 40s, etc). You can see that fully half of the cases are those of people under 30. So, young people really need to take this seriously: get vaccinated, avoid interactions or social settings that are risky, wear a mask, etc.