14 July 2022, Thursday — Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers

Day 808 of doing these daily posts continuously.

See photo captions for stories.

Photo 01
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
Sudden spike in infections: Concerns about where things could go from here
…
[Special report] The first summer festival in three years amid covid

Yep, covid was the top headline today. Numbers went north really fast.

In other news:
For the Abe case, apparently the assailant whipped up his own black powder from chemicals.
Sri Lanka is seeing massive unrest. And Sunak is top runner for the PM job.

Photo 2a
94493 new cases confirmed
[vs. 45821 for the same day last week, 23346 the same day two weeks ago.]
[Are we in Ireland? This number keeps Dublin.]

47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
New records for daily cases today in THIRTEEN prefectures:
Okinawa (topped 3500), Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Kochi, Wakayama, Mie, Ishikawa, Shizuoka, Iwate and Aomori.

Tokyo and Osaka in 5 digits.
Quadruple figures in 19 prefectures:
Okinawa, Saga, Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Shimane, Hiroshima, Hyogo, Kyoto, Nara, Mie, Aichi, Shizuoka, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba and Hokkaido is back too [vs. 11 prefectures same day last week]
26 prefectures in triple figures [vs. 35 prefectures same day last week] [in fact, nowhere lower than 250]
No prefectures in double figures [vs. 1 prefecture same day last week]
Nowhere in single figures

Tokyo on 16878 [vs. 8341 same day last week]
The highest number for Tokyo since Feb 17.
Osaka on 10452 [vs. 4621 same day last week]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 27.
[Border testing was relaxed even as the number of people being allowed into the country has doubled from June 01.]

Photo 02b
The total of current active serious cases stands at 90, up 7 vs. the previous day.

31 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31514*

Total recorded cases at 9917935 [We look set to top 10 million cases tomorrow]
Recovered cases at 9359369 (around 26,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 527,052 (up around 69000 vs the previous day and back over 500k).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of historical cases is 5.31%.
[5% of all the cases for the whole pandemic are happening right now.]

*500 death benchmarking
Today’s death toll puts the Japan total over 31500 and triggers my 500 death benchmarking.
It’s taken 26 days to pass the 31,500 mark (31514 on July 14, 31016 on June 18)
It took 21 days to pass the 31,000 mark (31016 on June 18, 30518 on May 28)
It took 14 days to pass the 30,500 mark (30518 on May 28, 30023 on May 14)
It took 14 days to pass the 30,000 mark (30023 on May 14, 29525 on April 29)
It took 12 days to pass the 29500 mark (29525 on April 29, 29015 on April 17)
It took 9 days to pass the 29000 mark (29015 on April 17, 28548 on April 08)
It took 8 days to pass the 28500 mark (28548 on April 08, 28035 on March 31)
It took 6 days to pass the 28000 mark (28035 on March 31, 27502 on Mar 25)
It took 5 days to pass the 27500 mark (27502 on Mar 25, 27072 on Mar 20)
It took 3 days to pass the 27000 mark (27072 on Mar 20, 26641 on Mar 17)
It took 4 days to pass the 26500 mark (26641 on Mar 17, 26084 on Mar 13)
It took 3 days to pass the 26000 mark (26084 on Mar 13, 25546 on Mar 10)
It took 2 days to pass the 25500 mark (25546 on Mar 10, 25084 on Mar 08)
It took 3 days to pass the 25000 mark (25084 on Mar 08, 24646 on Mar 05)
It took 2 days to pass the 24500 mark (24646 on Mar 05, 24156 on Mar 03)
It took 2 days to pass the 24000 mark (24156 on Mar 03, 23683 on Mar 01)
It took 3 days to add another 500 (23683 on Mar 01, 23085 on Feb 26)
It took 2 days to add another 500 (23085 on Feb 26, 22601 on Feb 24)
It took 2 days to add another 500 (22601 on Feb 24, 22033 on Feb 22)
It took 2 days to add another 500 (22033 on Feb 22, 21702 on Feb 20)
It took 3 days to add the previous 500 (21702 on Feb 20, 21,002 on Feb 17)
It took 2 days to add another 500 (21,002 on Feb 17, 20536 on Feb 15)
It took 3 days to add another 500 (220536 on Feb 15, 20105 on Feb 12)
It took 3 days to add another 500 (20105 on Feb 12, 19629 on Feb 09)
It took 5 days to add another 500 (19629 on Feb 09, 19070 on Feb 04)
It took 12 days to add another 500 (19070 on Feb 04, 18500 on Jan 23)
It took 82 days to add another 500 (18500 on Jan 23, 18000 on Oct 13)
Before that 15 days, 11 days, 8 days, 9 days, 12 days, 35 days, 22 days, 11 days, 6 days, 5 days, 6 days, 5 days, 4 days, 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 14,10, 9, 6, 7, 5.
In Jan 01 2021 figures (i.e. for 31 Dec 2020, i.e. for ALL of 2020 year), the total deaths stood at 3505.
In Jan 01 2022 figures (i.e. for 31 Dec 2020, i.e. for ALL of 2020-2021), the total deaths stood at 18405. [So we added 14900 in 2021.]
We are on 13,109 for the year so far (3-4 times 2020’s total, and two thirds of 2021’s total in 6.5 months).
Deaths the day before Suga became PM stood at 1460 (i.e. under Abe), 16000 deaths were Suga’s watch (11 times as many as Abe; Suga had a year of covid vs. Abe’s 6 months though). This makes 1400 under Kishida (about 9 times Abe’s and over 75% of Suga’s in 9 months).

Photo 03
This Tokyo clinic has seen the number of people coming in for fever consultations start to increase since last week, and now it is becoming difficult to see all the patients who want to be seen.
[Yes, this clinic is swabbing people in the alley at the side of the building. I had a similar experience at my local GP with my daughter; the doc had set up a tent outside the entrance for fever patients.
Reminds me of that Day Today sketch “Backstreet Dentists”…]

Photo 04
[The clinic had four positive cases just that morning.]
Doctor: How many covid jabs have you had?
Patient: Two.

Photo 05
[Doctor: How many covid jabs have you had?]
Patient: Three.

Photo 06
Doctor: The number of people who are getting infected even though they’ve been jabbed is on the increase.

Photo 07
Doctor: It won’t be long before I’ll have more patients than I can get around to seeing.

Photo 08
The results of some Tokyo Uni research regarding BA.5 (conducted on animals) [may be some cause for concern].
“There is a possibility that [BA.5] has more potential to trigger onset of symptoms compared to the other strains of omicron so far.”

Photo 09
The group created viruses that reproduced the characteristics of the Omicron strains “BA.2” and “BA.5” respectively, infected cultured cells, and examined how the virus multiplied.
They found that after 24 hours the amount of BA.5 virus present was 34 times higher than that of BA.2.

Photo 10
Furthermore, in an experiment in which hamsters were infected, those hamsters with “BA.2” did not lose weight, while those with “BA.5” lost about 10% of their body weight.
In addition, inflammation in the lungs etc. intensified.
[I will just note that the hamsters had not been vaccinated against covid in advance of this experiment, assuming they even can be?]

Photo 11
The research group said that further investigation is needed regarding the symptoms in humans.

Photo 12
Lead researcher and legit snack Professor Sato says that [the received wisdom that] virus virulence weakens over time as the virus evolves is not necessarily always the case.

Photo 13
“We have to think of measures on the premise that we may end up seeing a .6, .7 and .8 strain.”

Photo 14
The government panel of experts is compiling a list of emergency proposals to deal with the 7th wave of covid.

Photo 15
Among the required measures:
Making it easy to buy antigen test kits at pharmacies.
Effective ventilation. [For this second one, they used stock footage of somebody who was clearly opening the front door of a house he was calling on, rather than footage of someone opening a window or something].

Photo 16
And if pressure on the medical system becomes severe, they are not ruling out the need for stronger measures, including imposing restrictions on movements.

Photo 17
20 minutes later and NHK is onto the topic of how summer festivals are back on in many places after a two-year hiatus.
Here we see Gion in full swing in Kyoto on Tuesday.

Photo 18
And crowds lining the route of a danjiri festival in Hakata, also on Tuesday.

Photo 19
This introduced a piece about a more local Tanabata festival which was put on for the first time in three years, with covid measures (one-way walking, no eating and drinking on the street, no food or game stalls, no light up night viewing) and how the project became a way to pass the tradition on to a younger generation (they got uni and high school students involved) who had input and ideas on how to run the festival going forward.