Ebina Mosque as a Vaccination Site

Ebina Mosque is a place of worship used daily by Muslims—mainly people with foreign citizenship. Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, on weekdays, 10 to 50 Muslims attend each of the five daily prayers; on Fridays, 300 to 400 Muslims gather for mass prayers. The nationalities of the worshippers are diverse: while a majority are Sri Lankans, some are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Fijians, and so forth. They not only live in Ebina City, but also in neighboring municipalities. The four-story mosque, newly built in 1998, has worship space on the first through third floors. It is managed and operated by a Sri Lankan representative, a deputy Pakistani representative, a Sri Lankan imam, and a Pakistani imam. It is one of 19 mosques managed by the religious corporation, Darussalam. ^{Reference Okai, Takahashi, Shirahase and Hoshino5}

Vaccination at this mosque started on Saturday, July 31, 2021. The Ebina City Office had three group vaccination sites (i.e., two gymnasiums and one convention center). However, from late June 2021, the City Office planned to use the mosque where foreign residents regularly gathered, as a vaccination site. The City Office intended to combat the inability of people to receive vaccinations due to language barriers, and also to increase the vaccination rate in the region as a whole. After lobbying the mosque, the City Office executed the plan. (The current city mayor was from the area where the mosque was located, and in building the mosque, he mediated between local Muslims and Japanese residents. Such a relationship might have backed this vaccination drive, but future research is required to identify the key factors.)

Vaccinations occurred every Saturday and continued until October 23, 2021. Consequently, approximately 750 people associated with the mosque were vaccinated. The target population was Ebina residents first, but it was expanded to residents of neighboring municipalities. Most of the targeted people were foreign Muslims who regularly used the mosque, but a few Japanese (i.e., wives and children of foreign Muslims) and people of other religions who had a connection to the mosque were also included. Reservations were accepted at the mosque, not through the city’s booking website, and were reported to the City Office by the mosque managers. Each week, approximately 100 people were vaccinated for 1.5 h, starting at 2:00 pm, by doctors, nurses, and paramedics entrusted by the City Office. Pfizer vaccines were used, and a 75-m² room on the second and/or third floor was used as the vaccination site.

On the vaccination day, the reception desk opened at 1:30 pm. The residence card and the certificate of residence of each person with a reservation were checked at the desk. Once checked, people went to the designated vaccination rooms on the second or third floor, which were well ventilated with open windows and an electric fan. They entered the rooms in order and sat down to wait. When approximately 30 people had gathered, a Japanese doctor explained the precautions in Japanese in front of them. After that, doctors walked around and conducted individual medical interviews. Thereafter, nurses and paramedics administered vaccinations to those who had completed the medical interview (Figure 1). After vaccination, the vaccine recipients waited for 15 min for observation. Japanese traditional bedding (a futon) prepared by the mosque was placed at the back of the room in case anyone became unwell. Those whose waiting time had expired left the room. This cycle was repeated until the scheduled number of people for the day was completed.

Figure 1.

People receiving vaccinations on the third floor of Ebina Mosque (doctors, nurses, and paramedics wore scrimmage vests).

There were two notable aspects of vaccination at the mosque: multilingual support and gender support. For multilingual support, medical questionnaires in Japanese and English were available. Confirmation and questions about vaccination precautions (i.e., history of anaphylaxis) in Japanese, English, Tamil, Urdu, Sinhalese, and Bengali were also posted at the reception. Furthermore, three or four interpreters conversant in several foreign languages were on standby. They could interpret Japanese into not only English but also Bengali, Tamil, Sinhala, and other languages. The interpreters were all volunteers from among the daily worshippers as well as the mosque representative and imams. They interpreted beside the doctors during the initial group explanations and the individual medical interviews. Additionally, vaccine recipients were given stickers to wear, naming the language in which they were fluent (Japanese, English, Sinhalese, Tamil, and so on), enabling Japanese staff to easily determine the appropriate interpreter required by the recipients.

Support regarding gender was based on the fact that most of the vaccine recipients were Muslims. Measures were taken to avoid females sharing the same space with males. Specifically, the vaccination rooms were separated for women and men (i.e., women on the second floor and men on the third floor), or if they shared the same room, the women’s space was separated by a curtain. Female nurses administered vaccinations to female recipients.