ABSTRACT

Population aging is a global phenomenon, and the concept of age-friendly community has emerged in the early 2000s. It means that all people living in the community can enjoy actively their daily life including a variety of social activities until the second half of their lives. In recent years, the pandemic has developed as the number of COVID-19 cases has soared around the world. Suppression strategies such as social distancing have been mandatorily adopted as a means of coping with the spread of the pandemic. This has changed the living environment dramatically, resulting in that vulnerable people such as older adults have become very difficult to adapt the change. Specifically, it has had a serious impact on the physical health, mental health, and even survival of the older adults. Among the older adults, the impact has been greater on the physically and/or mentally frail ones. It emphasized that the age-friendly concept should be applicable under any circumstances in this paper. Especially the current author stressed the concept needs to be restructured in the context of age-friendly health care system.