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

Day 783 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 directly covid in these headlines, but I picked a couple of interesting stories from this morning and last night, and last night’s 7pm news had the numbers.

Photo 2a

First the numbers:

14837 new cases confirmed

[vs. 15351 for the same day last week. 18252 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 3 prefectures:

Okinawa, Osaka, Tokyo

33 prefectures in triple figures

11 prefectures in double figures

Tokyo on 1681 [vs. 1526 same day last week]

Osaka on 1255 [vs. 1255 same day last week]

[Tokyo up on last week, Osaka coincidentally exactly the same number as last week (= Osaka weekend capacity? 😊)

The number of positives at immigration testing was 15

[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 39, down 1 vs. the previous day.

20 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31036

Total recorded cases at 9140474

Recovered cases at 8949201* (around 19,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

*8930511 is shown on this slide but it is a mistake – that is yesterday’s number.

The correct number has been taken from the website.

Total active cases are at 160,237 (down around 4000 vs the previous day).

Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.75%.

Photo 03

There was a bit about companies’ working style on the 7pm bulletin last night.

NTT will institute a policy [for some workers] from next month, where working from home is the base standard, and going to the office is treated as a business trip.

Photo 04

The idea is to let people live wherever they like.

And commuting by plane will be accepted.

Photo 05

Of 98 companies they surveyed who currently have work from home policies, only 10 of them want to expand the current system, 38 want to continue the current system, 8 want to continue the system in a reduced form and 41 are “other” (presumably includes companies who want workers to go back to the office).

Photo 06

NEC wants to reduce telework as they feel that there is maybe not enough communication between employees. They have set up spaces conducive to communication.

Photo 07

Yogibo…

Photo 08

Honda on the other hand from next month will go to “come to the office as a general rule,” brought in in stages.

Photo 09

Horyuji temple aimed to crowdfund 20 million yen for repairs and upkeep, but quickly received 65 million yen in funding pledges.

Photo 10

The background to this is a big drop in income due to the number of visitors falling to around half during the pandemic.

Photo 11

The temple has 150 buildings and 65000 artifacts, some of them national treasures.

[Though they get some money from the government, upkeep needs to be funded to the tune of 35 million a year.]

Photo 12

The final piece is just for your interest: Companies are turning to AI to conduct first interviews with job candidates.

Photo 13

3.8% of listed companies are currently using such a system.

[Why does the AI look evil?]

Photo 14

But the rate of adoption is up 3 times vs. before covid.

Photo 15

Finally, there was a piece on people who were caught up in “indiscriminate attacks” like last year’s knife attack on the Odakyu line.

There was a big jump in this type of attack last year – 15 incidents vs. 0-6 for previous years. In 8 of the cases, the perpetrator testified that they “wanted to die.”

[They also mentioned that in many of the cases, the decision to commit the act was taken on the day or the day before.]