TOKYO — The Japanese government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak has been staggeringly incompetent. Why, when so much is at stake for Japan, especially as the host country of the Olympics this summer?

The first infection in Japan was confirmed on Jan. 28. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus to be “a public health emergency of international concern” on Jan. 30. But it took until Feb. 17 for the Health Ministry of Japan to even inform the public about when, where and how to contact government health care centers in case of a suspected infection. And it was only this Tuesday that the government finally adopted a “basic policy” for responding to the outbreak — which essentially boiled down to asking people to stay home. As of Wednesday, there were 847 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (and six deaths) in or just offshore of Japan.

Medical professionals are running short of face masks, disinfectant and test kits — and Japan is running short of medical professionals who can perform diagnostic tests. Yet so far Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has rejected the opposition’s demand to increase the budget currently under discussion in Parliament, or the Diet, to help tackle the outbreak; he has said it was premature to assume that the existing budget reserve will be insufficient.

And so the Japanese people have been told not to seek testing, nor bother visiting medical institutions unless their symptoms are severe and lasting. Mr. Abe has, in effect, outsourced the government’s containment efforts to the population itself, while the state concentrates limited resources on the severely ill and makes little effort to increase those resources. He might also have been thinking: With no test, there can be no rise in confirmed cases either.