[1][2] Takaji Wakita, Director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, chairs the Expert Meeting and Shigeru Omi who was instrumental in SARS measures as director of WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific and later worked to respond to the 2009 swine flu pandemic in Japan is a vice chairman.
The members are composed of Prof. Hitoshi Oshitani, who is the leader of the Cluster Measures Team and remedied the situation in the SARS outbreak as an infectious disease advisor at WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, and others.
If countries around the world repeatedly block the city and lift the blockade every time an outbreak occurs, the global economy and society will collapse.
[12][13] The Expert Meeting analyzed the outbreak from Wuhan, which became the first wave of COVID-19 in Japan, and discovered the conditions under which clusters occur, "Three C's (3つの密, Mittsu no Mitsu)".
A small particle of less than 10 micrometers in diameter containing the virus, a micro-spray floats in the air for 20 minutes, and the infection spreads by people nearby sucking it in.
The Expert Meeting set their eyes on that, they decided to prevent outbreaks by tracking infected people and testing those who were in close contact with them.
The new coronavirus became a designated infectious disease, so those who tested positive were required to be hospitalized even for mild cases, and there were few sickbeds.
[23][24] In addition, it was evaluated that "early detection of the spread of two waves of infection from China and Europe" and "cluster countermeasures" were effective.
At that time, the number of cases did not increase significantly in Germany, France, and the UK, etc., but it is possible that it advanced unnoticed.
Cluster surveillance using active epidemiological surveys, such as interviewing infected people, is also common abroad, but there is a big difference in the method between Japan and them.
"Prospective contact tracking" is a basic strategy for cluster surveillance that is carried out when aiming for virus containment, and has a history of being used during SARS and Ebola.
The Expert Meeting said the re-emergence of the spread of infection of latent cases could have already occurred in some areas of Japan, and that it is important to being cautious about and being on the watch for that while continuing socio-economic activity.
[13][26][38] In question-and-answer sessions at the Upper House Budget Committee, Omi, the deputy chairman, was criticized for the small number of PCR tests and was blamed by Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary general of the Constitutional Democratic Party of JapanTY for stating that no one knew the actual total number of people infected.
[39] The Expert Meeting was blamed by opposition parties and the media for not fulfilling their responsibilities as scientists for not recording minutes.
[30][32][41] ABC-TV quoted a Japanese professor Koichi Nakano's contribution as a side note, and wondered, "Why did the number of infected people suddenly increase in Japan as soon as it was postponed?
CNN, an American pay TV channel, cited interviews with medical personnel Kenji Shibuya and Masahiro Kami, as well as political scientist Koichi Nakano and Japanese Communist Party Rep. Tomoko Tamura, and said that the number of infected people announced by the Japanese government is an undercount and that more tests will need to be actively conducted to accurately grasp the actual situation.
[27][32][42][46] On the other hand, many infectious disease specialists and clinicians who were familiar with EBM complained about easy expansion of PCR tests through SNS.
Omi argued that testing a large number of asymptomatic people who were worried would cause collapse of the medical care system.
[13][47][48][49] Kenji Shibuya, a senior adviser to Tedros Adhanom and a professor at King's College London in the UK, severely criticizes the Expert Meeting that Japan couldn't expand the PCR tests because of their old way of thinking about classifying "returnees" and "contacts.
Shibuya is participating in a national movement that calls in the government to carry out a 100% PCR test for all citizens, which costs 54 trillion yen.
[57] Using the data from the Institute of Infectious Diseases, Shibuya said, "I can't say with 100% certainty, but I can see that there was an excess mortality caused by another infection , the new coronavirus, in February.
"[58][59] Shibuya said that the infection status of Japan, which can be read from the data released by the government and Tokyo, was insufficient, and lacked important informations on epidemiology.
[62] Kami concludes that Japan's unsuccessful measures against corona are due to the clinical neglect, research supremacy and confidentiality of Expert Meeting.
He traced the roots of members' alma mater back to before WWII, and he accused them that they are an establishment type who inherited the DNA of the Japanese Imperial Army, and that what they were doing to patients was not a treatment but a human experimentation.
[62][63] Koichi Nakano, a member of the citizens' group "Civic Union calling for the Abolition of the Japan-U.S. Security System and The Restoration of Constitutionalism" and a professor at Sophia University, contributed an article to New York Times entitled "Japan Can't Handle the Coronavirus.
[33][34][42] Yōichi Masuzoe, a former Governor of Tokyo and a political commentator, criticized the prime minister, saying, "No one might call the person who entrusts the judgment to the Expert Meeting which made many mistakes, and the person who is a puppet of the medical association and the governors association to the prime minister of a country.
[65] Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Group CEO, proposed free distribution of PCR test kits for one million people, but he gave up mainly due to criticism from medical professionals.