02 July 2021 (Friday) – Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of maybe 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers

See photo captions for stories

Photo 01a
Somehow I made it through the heartache, yes, I did
Oh, I escaped (Aha ha)
I found my way out of the darkness
I kept my faith (I know you did), kept my faith

Photo 01b
Japan covid-related topics from NHK’s 7am news bulletin today.
– Tokyo’s daily infections could be over 1000 within 4 weeks
– Olympics: “Discussions include having no spectators”
– Differences by region in economic recover driven by vaccinations
Uniqlo is being investigated in France for possibly having Uighur forced-labor in their supply chain.

Photo 02
[Taken from the NHK website]
1754 cases confirmed yesterday
[slightly up vs. 1676 for the same day last week. FYI: 1554 for the same day two weeks ago.]
[In a fortunate coincidence for our daily total, Jan 28 1754 Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, coins the word serendipity.]

42 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new daily prefectural records appear to have been set.

Tokyo was 673
[up vs. 570 for the same day last week.]

Osaka at 108
[vs. 116 for the same day last week]

Joining Tokyo and Osaka in triple figures were all of Tokyo’s neighbors:
Kanagawa 211
Chiba 139
Saitama 142

The number of positives at immigration testing was 5.

MN: Apparently he pulled the word from the fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip.” Originally the word “Serendip” is the Old Persian name for Sri Lanka and it comes from the Arab word “Sarandib” which is in turn from Sanskrit “Simhaladvipa,” meaning “Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island.” I learned that when I visited Sri Lanka!

Photo 03
[Taken from the NHK website]
24 deaths confirmed yesterday, for a total of 14821.

The total of current active serious cases stands at 517, down 6 on the previous day.

Total recorded cases at 802265.

Recovered cases at 768987 (up around 1700 on the previous day).
[drabs calculator]
Total active cases are at 18457 (UP around 16 on the previous day), another rise.
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total is 2.3% (holding steady on the previous day)

Photo 04
Tokyo’s 673 is over 100 up on the corresponding day of the previous week and 12 straight days of the day being higher than the corresponding day of the previous week.

Photo 05
Experts at yesterday’s Tokyo monitoring meeting said that if the infection situation continues like this, Tokyo cases could be back to over 1000 cases a day in four weeks’ time.
[Far be it from me to argue with the experts but with numbers already around 700 and suggestions that the Delta virus has reached a critical threshold, that timeline seems conservative. Maybe the hot weather will help. And bear in mind that we MAY see an increase in cases without a proportional increase in serious cases (like we did last summer), but again, the Delta variant would suggest otherwise.]

Photo 06
Koike attended the meeting remotely.
[With concern I would add that she sounded awful, and is it just me or did she sound…out of breath?]

Photo 07
A rare sighting of the Kansai figures on the regional bulletin.
171 for the region with Osaka on its third straight day of over 100 cases.
9 deaths confirmed.

Photo 08
A cluster of 8 staff and customers for an establishment where alcohol is served in Kobe.

Photo 09
This is the first “establishment where alcohol is served” cluster in Kobe since the lifting of the SofE.

Photo 10
Olympics now, and the Komeito party leader has said that considerations of how to deal with spectators must have the option on the table of holding events behind closed doors.

Photo 11
Suga said that he himself declared that “no spectators is also a possibility.”
[It finally hit me about that Suga reminds me of when he adopts his dead-eyed lying face (which is basically all the time). He looks like a bass that’s been mounted by a taxidermist.]

Photo 12
“We will respond (to the situation) while prioritizing the safety and security of the Japanese people.”

Photo 13
Suga indicated that he expected the 5 Olympic stakeholder groups to make decisions about spectators taking into consideration the government’s decision [coming soon] as to whether to extend Manbo measures from their current deadline of July 11.

DE: Don’t the people of Japan also have a stake in the Olympics?

Photo 14
There are opinions within the government that “if the current infection situation continues, then discussions of extending Manbo cannot be avoided.”

Photo 15
The Tokyo Organizing Committee is considering whether to postpone the ticket lottery whose results were to be announced on July 06.
[With venue capacity at 10,000, the TOC was going to run a lottery to see who among current ticket holders would stick get to keep their tickets and come to events. However, with the possibility of no spectators (except IOC cronies) back on the table, they are thinking of adopting a wait and see approach to the lottery. But the Olympics open three weeks from today, so they don’t have a lot of wait-and-see time.]

Photo 16
The postponement of the ticket “re-lottery” affects some parts of the following 7 events: Opening ceremony, closing ceremony, athletics, soccer, etc.

Photo 17
Vaccinations of the over 65s:
As of June 30, 61.89% had had first jabs, and 28.15% had had second jabs.

Photo 18
Here is a breakdown of the first jab percentage by prefecture for the over 65s

MK: First dose stats are really just government PR; second doses (fully vaccinated) are more important to focus on.

Photo 19

Saga is top dog at 76.88%

Photo 20

Gifu only a hair behind.

Osaka and Tokyo are relative laggards.

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But the wooden spoon goes to Hokkaido.

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The governor says that Hokkaido is big, and the longer the distance needing to be covered, the longer it physically takes.

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Also with the fifth lowest number of clinics per 100k population, they are having trouble securing the necessary medical staff.

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They are trying to speed up the pace of vaccinations.

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For example, Sapporo city’s “Vaccine loss zero center” aims to let people who want to get vaccinated know via SNS when a slot opens up due to a sudden cancellation.

[To borrow a favourite analogy, that’s like trying to make space on your hard drive by deleting txt files.]

Photo 26

There were suggestions that difference paces of vaccination would lead to different paces of economic recovery.

Economist: “Places that have rolled out quickly will find themselves to have vaccinated quite widely by the time the summer rolls around” [the Summer here generally meaning the post-rainy season]

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“Places like that will see increased demand for summer travel and dining out.”

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“We can expect to see recovery in the Summer-serving service industries.”

[Yes, vaccinated people will want to travel, but one of the places they want to travel to is actually least-vaccinated Hokkaido. (And don’t take my word for it, there was a piece on the travel industry a few days ago mentioning the popularity of packages to Hokkaido.)]