15 June 2022, Wednesday– Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers

Day 779 of doing these daily posts continuously.

See photo captions for stories.

Photo 01

Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:

Nothing specifically covid in the 7am bulletin but I scraped today’s story and numbers from the 9pm news last night.

Just for your info here, this morning’s show covered the story of BTS going on hiatus to pursue solo projects, menopause difficulties for working women, and covert subscription purchase schemes, e.g. you purchase make up for 1800 yen without realizing that you have agreed to a contract of repeat purchases at 10,000 yen a month for at least 4 months. (There is a lot of this for supplements too.)

Photo 2a

But first the numbers:

15331 new cases confirmed

[vs. 17039 for the same day last week. 22022 the same day two weeks ago.]

47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.

No new daily case records.

Nowhere with five digits

Quadruple figures in 4 prefectures:

Okinawa, Osaka, Aichi, Tokyo

32 prefectures in triple figures

11 prefectures in double figures

Tokyo on 1528 [vs. 1800 same day last week]

Osaka on 1590 [vs. 1925 same day last week]

[Tokyo has been down vs. same day previous week for 32 straight days now, and they also said that this is the first time since last April that no one in Tokyo is listed as a serious case.]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 13

[Border testing was relaxed even as double the number of people are being allowed into the country from June 01.]

Photo 02b

The total of current active serious cases stands at 61, no change from the previous day.

29 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 30955

Total recorded cases at 9078876

Recovered cases at 8880009 (around 19,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 167,912 (down around 4000 vs the previous day.

Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.84%.

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A draft report of a panel verifying the government’s covid countermeasures during the pandemic has been submitted.

The report states: Japan was able to keep the number of deaths down compared to the US and Europe despite a high ratio of old people in the population.

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Report: However, the recovery of GDP which “fell due to the States of Emergency and other factors” has been sluggish.

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[This is mostly lifted straight from the NHK News in English article with a few tweaks]

Regarding the medical system, the panel says the roles of medical institutions in each region were unclear. Hospitals were slow to secure sufficient beds for COVID patients, as they were not legally required to do so. They responded based solely on government requests.

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[Experts say medical institutions were often overstretched as a result, and that] it took time to set up systems that provide medical care to people recuperating at home and handle outpatients with fever.

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The draft calls on the government to consider introducing legally-binding measures and review regional healthcare systems.

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The draft also points to the need to drastically strengthen the testing system, as experts say the government failed to respond fully to a growing demand for tests.

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It also says the government’s advisory panel needs to set up systems to swiftly share information, as there were times when transparency and scientific objectivity were lacking [in the panel’s comments and decisions].

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The panel also says that when introducing restrictions on the movements of people based on anti-virus laws, the government must carefully explain why it’s taking the measures, and that it is important to provide information smoothly so that citizens can act calmly. [Presumably this means “don’t snaffle all the toilet paper.”]

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The draft calls on the government to set up a control center that can quickly respond to crises by strengthening its administrative authority over medical institutions.

It also asks the government to coordinate with relevant ministries and agencies, while bolstering its expert teams.

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Under proposals to drastically strengthen future measures, Japan’s government plans to set up “Cabinet Infectious Disease Crisis Management Agency” will be established under the control of the Cabinet Secretariat to take centralized countermeasures.

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The draft also calls for integrating the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which conducts basic research, and the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, which provides clinical medicine, into a new institute that would be the Japanese version of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The government also plans to set up an infectious disease taskforce to step up response capacity by integrating the relevant sections of the MHLW. The taskforce would cooperate with the new “Japan CDC institute” and municipalities.

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The draft also calls for a study on giving prefectural governors the power to issue instructions and orders to hospitals for securing beds during Manbo, and for the national government to have the authority to revoke the approval of hospitals with special functions, etc. [Presumably this means things like telling cancer hospitals that they will have to take on disease patients during a pandemic?]

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Furthermore, in order to ensure smooth hospitalization during an SofE, the government is discussing creating a system whereby prefectural authorities would have the right to direct cities and wards with health centers as to where patients can/should be hospitalized.

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The government is to officially decide on the plan this week.