Autoworkers eat lunch at a Dongfeng Honda plant in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province, where the coronavirus was first detected. They are back to work but observing distancing and other safety measures. / Getty Images

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is seeking more hotel rooms to accommodate coronavirus sufferers with mild or no symptoms.

Tokyo government officials started moving patients to hotels in the capital earlier this month to free up hospital beds for those in a more serious condition.

At least 75 critically ill coronavirus patients in Japan have received life-support treatment involving ECMO machines that replace the function of the heart and lungs. The number has nearly doubled in two weeks.

The figure is based on surveys by medical associations, including the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine.

E-commerce giant Rakuten says more than 700 hotels on its travel website can accommodate patients with mild symptoms of coronavirus.

Rakuten officials say they want to help free up space at overburdened hospitals. They say they are approaching 36,000 accommodations, and that so far, 744 say they are available. Rakuten says this would open up about 91,000 rooms.

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.

Rooms of a business hotel in Tokyo that will accommodate coronavirus patients with mild or no symptoms were shown to the media on Tuesday.

The Tokyo Metropolitan government plans to move less ill patients to hotels in the capital to secure enough hospital beds to prepare for a possible spike in the number of severely ill 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.

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.

Japan's health ministry has decided to relax the rules for discharging coronavirus patients with mild symptoms from hospitals.

The government made the decision after its expert panel on Wednesday stressed the need to put priority on seriously ill patients. The health experts recommend that people who only have minor symptoms should self-isolate in their homes or hotels.

A survey by Japanese doctors shows a majority of patients who underwent therapy with a heart-lung machine are recovering from serious conditions caused by the new coronavirus.

The survey shows at least 23 coronavirus patients across Japan had received the treatment involving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as ECMO.

Teams of researchers from across the world have reported on how some patients infected with the new coronavirus have recovered.

A group at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report in a medical magazine on the treatment of a 35-year-old male patient who returned from Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of outbreak. He was confirmed to have been infected after complaining of coughing and a fever.

A Japanese doctor who treated two patients infected with the new coronavirus says as there is no cure for the disease he provided them with proper nourishment and rest, and then waited for their recovery.

Tsunehiro Shimizu, Director of the infectious diseases department at Kyoto City Hospital, treated a female student in her 20s who had returned from the Chinese city of Wuhan, her hometown, and a Chinese man in his 20s who attended to tourists at a shop in Kyoto, western Japan.

Japanese researchers say they have isolated and cultured the new coronavirus from samples taken from infected people. The coronavirus has caused a pneumonia outbreak in China.

Researchers at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases made the announcement on Friday.