The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has begun moving people who have tested positive for the new coronavirus but have only mild or no symptoms to a hotel.
The government rented the budget hotel in central Tokyo to temporarily accommodate such patients.
The Tokyo government will use a hotel for patients with relatively mild or no symptoms of the new coronavirus in preparation for a spike of infection cases.
Tokyo officials announced on Monday that the metropolitan government had requisitioned a business hotel in the capital's Chuo Ward.
Japan's health minister says local governments should consider asking people with mild symptoms of the coronavirus to self-isolate at their homes or in hotels.
Kato Katsunobu told reporters on Friday that the ministry will allow local governments to decide whether people with mild or no symptoms should be hospitalized. It wants to give priority to seriously ill patients in Tokyo and other areas where the number of cases is rapidly increasing.
Sources familiar with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's health policy say officials are working to secure hotels for currently hospitalized coronavirus patients whose symptoms are mild.
The sources say doctors will be at the hotels to monitor patients. They add that patients will be hospitalized again if their symptoms worsen.
A doctor who treated people infected with the new coronavirus says symptoms are relatively mild but measures should be taken to protect vulnerable people.
Satoshi Kutsuna of Japan's National Center for Global Health and Medicine spoke to NHK about his experience treating five patients.