Kentaro Iwata


Kentaro Iwata is a Japanese physician, professor and infectious diseases expert at Kobe University.

Career

After his graduation from the Shimane Medical University in 1997, Iwata became a medical intern worked at. In the next year, he became a medical intern worked at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital of Columbia University.
Iwata started his career as an internist at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in 2001. In 2004, he returned to Japan and hired by, he was appointed the head of Division of Infectious Disease, head of Comprehensive Medical Infectious Diseases. Since 2008 he served as Clinical Department Head Professor of Kobe University.

COVID-19 outbreak

During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, the cruise ship Diamond Princess was quarantined in the Port of Yokohama in Japan. Iwata strongly criticised the management of the situation in two widely circulated YouTube videos published on 18 February. In videos, he described the conditions of quarantined Diamond Princess as "completely chaotic", and called the ship a "COVID-19 mill". On 20 February, he deleted the videos himself, and said " there is no need for further discussing this". He also denied he had been pressured to delete the videos.