滝本 匠 
July 26, 2022 Ryukyu Shimpo
By Takuya Kayo
The “Coronavirus Consulting Service” a call center in Okinawa that advises residents about the coronavirus and gives them information about where they can go see a doctor was recently overloaded with calls, which ended up jamming the phone lines. According to the Okinawa Center for Infectious Disease, the call center can handle around 1,000 calls per day, however since July there has been a sudden spike in cases, which has led to sometimes over 10,000 calls in a single day, leaving some unable to receive consultation.
According to Okinawa Prefecture, many of the calls are people who have become ill and are looking for a medical facility that can admit them. Since the medical facilities that have outpatient care for people with a fever listed on the Okinawa Prefecture’s homepage are also hard to get a hold of on the phone, and one person from the center explains, “There are people who keep calling the call center until they get through, which leads to a flood of incoming calls.”
In June, the volume of calls was around 600-700 calls per day, but this number grew tenfold in July, with over 5,000 new cases leading to 10,000 calls to the center.
Employees of the call center each handle around 20 lines as part of normal operations, however due to the rise in cases the number of people who were out sick began to rise as well. The prefecture is planning on increasing the call center’s budget in order to hire more people, however due to the wave of cases it is difficult to hire enough people to keep up.
The prefecture has posted a graph on their website showing the number of calls at different times throughout the day, and they urge people to try calling at a time when it is less busy. A representative from the call center asked, “In order to prevent a panic if you get sick, please review the homepage even if you are not sick so that you can understand the process of testing and hospital admission, as well as reviewing the hospitals that can admit patients.”
(English translation by T&CT and Sam Grieb)
