Around 30% of workers in Japan may have failed to report COVID infection to employer, survey

After testing positive for the novel coronavirus it seems to go without saying that a worker would let the boss know, doesn’t it? This might not be the case in Japan though, with possibly as many as 30 percent of workers here having not reported a positive COVID-19 test to their employer, according to a recent survey. 

In a July survey carried out by a Japan-based job research institute 31.9 percent of respondents who had at one time tested positive for COVID-19 said that they had not reported this to their employer.  

The survey, conducted by Laibo Inc., targeted respondents between the ages of 20 and 50 years old working at companies with 20 to over 1000 employees. 15.2 percent of the respondents said that they had become infected with COVID-19 in the past.

Of the survey respondents who had yet to have become infected with the virus or to have experienced any of its related symptoms 5.6 percent answered “no” when asked whether or not they would report a positive test for the virus to their place of work. 

The most common reasons cited for having not reported, or not wanting to report in the future, a positive test result were the feeling of it not being necessary due to working remotely full time (cited by 36.1 percent of respondents), it being too troublesome to report (27.9 percent), and the interference with work it would cause due to having to take time off (23.0 percent). 

Despite the apparent reluctance in some workers to report a positive test for COVID-19 to their employer, over 90 percent of the survey respondents said they were consciously practicing virus prevention measures. Over 80 percent also said that they were at least somewhat concerned about the seventh wave of the outbreak which has since seen cases of infections soar to record levels - well over 200,000 new cases a day in Japan in early August.  

In the second half of July, Japan reached the unenviable position of being the country with the world's highest number of new coronavirus cases, according to a World Health Organization report.

Among the 16.5 percent of survey respondents who expressed no concern about the seventh wave, the top three reasons cited were having become familiar enough with life “with corona” to the extent that they don’t feel any sense of crises, the situation having no influence on their lifestyle, and the feeling that even with stringent antivirus measures there will still be infections.

“I had begun to live life without wearing a face mask but since the seventh wave began I’ve started wearing them again.” Survey respondent. 

While a potential 30 percent of workers in Japan not reporting their positive virus test result to the boss might seem surprising, the number of survey respondents was comparatively small at 835. 

“If we assume that 30 percent of the 13.1 million people in Japan who have experienced the coronavirus infection did not report it, this means that approximately 3.9 million people did not report it,” a representative of the job research institute at Laibo Inc. told local news. 

“Of course, the number of people infected with the virus includes those who are not in the workforce, but it’s easy to assume that the number is not small when taking into account the entire population of Japan” they said.

The institute decided to conduct their latest survey looking into the awareness of, and attitudes towards, the current novel coronavirus situation in Japan after having carried out in May a survey looking at attitudes towards wearing face masks.

Through the face mask survey the institute received comments from respondents which reflected varying attitudes toward reporting infections to employers, according to reports.  

One respondent said that after reporting to their workplace that they had tested positive using a home test kit, they were asked to submit a certificate from a doctor. The respondent was said to have expressed feelings of guilt about going to see a doctor just to get a certificate, given news about the strain on medical facilities.

In another comment, a respondent is reported to have said that reporting a positive test result will mean having to take a time off, causing interference with their work. They were said to have felt that there are many people who do not report their infection, especially if they are asymptomatic.

Cases of workers not reporting a positive test result to their employers, while still likely surprising to many, do perhaps reflect broader questions from experts and government officials about the extent to which case numbers are reported and logged in Japan.  

With infections soaring under the seventh wave there are concerns that reporting every case is placing an unnecessary burden on medical facilities and public health centers, particularly with the prevalent Omicron variant of the virus posing a lower risk of severe illness. 

Among those diagnosed with COVID-19 from January to February 2022, when Omicron was the prevalent variant, the rate of severe cases was 0.03 percent in people aged 50 or younger and 2.49 percent in those over 60, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. 

“Depending on the scale of infections we will listen to what the experts and prefectural governments have to say and make a very careful decision on the matter,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters on Monday in response to questions raised about the status of the virus on the country’s infectious disease surveillance system which currently requires all cases be reported to the government. 

The Laibo Inc. survey on “coronavirus awareness in 2022” was carried out online from July 21-25.  

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