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

Day 807 of doing these daily posts continuously.

See photo captions for stories.

Photo 01a
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
Discussing whether to expand the eligibility for 4th covid jabs
Why have infection numbers suddenly spiked? What can we do about them?
…
Launch of “Go To Travel”-type national discount system postponed for the time-being
[and “Prefectural Citizen Discount” extended instead

For the Abe case, they interviewed an American ex-Secret Service guy/consultant who said the bodyguards’ job is to swarm and protect Abe, not all rush the gunman like they appeared to do.

Photo 2a
76011 new cases confirmed
[vs. 36189 for the same day last week, 19386 the same day two weeks ago.]
[More than double the same day last week, which was almost double the same day of two weeks ago.
The good news is that AI suggests we will peak in the next two weeks…]

47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
New records for daily cases today in TWELVE prefectures:
Okinawa (at nearly 3500), Nagasaki, Saga, Kumamoto, Oita, Kagoshima, Yamaguchi, Shimane (topping 1000), Tottori, Ehime (topping 1000), Wakayama and Aomori.

Tokyo in 5 digits.
Quadruple figures in 17 prefectures:
Okinawa, Saga, Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Oita, Kagoshima, Shimane, Ehime, Hyogo, Osaka (just short of 10k), Kyoto, Aichi (over 6000), Gifu, Shizuoka, Kanagawa (just short of 5k), Saitama, Chiba [vs. 10 prefectures same day last week]
29 prefectures in triple figures [vs. 35 prefectures same day last week]
No prefectures in double figures [vs. 2 prefectures same day last week]
Nowhere in single figures

Tokyo on 11511 [vs. 5302 same day last week]
This is about 4 months since this number has been over 10,000.
Osaka on 9960 [vs. 4523 same day last week]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 16.
[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 83, up 8 vs. the previous day.

23 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31483

Total recorded cases at 9823455
Recovered cases at 9333625 (around 24,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 458,347 (up around 52000 vs the previous day and back over 450k).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of historical cases is 4.66%.

Photo 03
The govt. says it has no requests for Manbo, etc. from any of the prefectures and does not feel there is a need to restrict people’s movements at this point in time.

Photo 04
However, out of concerns that the infection situation might get even worse going forward, the govt. is liaising with prefectural authorities to secure hospital beds.

Photo 05
With both a three-day weekend coming up this weekend and Obon just around the corner, it is forecast that the opportunities for people to come into contact with other people will increase.

Photo 06
The govt is calling for ThorPreMe such as handwashing and ventilation.

Photo 07
They are discussing whether to set up free testing centers at main train stations and airports.
And they are also considering expanding the eligibility of 4th jabs to include medical workers, etc. [Care-home workers have been calling for this for some time now. I didn’t realize it wasn’t actually being done…]

Photo 08
The government will holds its Strategic HQ meeting on Friday to discuss measures going forward. [Usual routine: panel of experts is meeting tomorrow, Strategic HQ will have a meeting on Friday, and we may well see a press conference on Friday night…]

Photo 09
NHK asked a couple of their favorite experts, Wada and Mizuno, why infections are shooting up all of a sudden. The reasons they gave were:
1. The spread of people eating and drinking without masks in unventilated spaces.
2. The [relative] lack of progress of third jabbing the younger generations.
3. BA.5 taking over and becoming the dominant variant.

Photo 10
About (1), Mizuno says that since around the end of the rainy season, a string of very hot days has seen an increase in people using the air conditioner, eating and drinking in unventilated spaces, and talking without masks, which may have boosted the speed of the spread.

Photo 11
For (2), Wada says that behind the rise in cases among those in their 30s and 40s is a lack of progress in third jabbing those age groups.

Photo 12
While the 60s and over are 80% third jabbed, and 76.5% for people in their 50s, the percentage for people in their 30s and 40s is under 60%.

Photo 13
As for (3) and BA.5, it’s been taking over quickly.
The proportion of cases in Tokyo suspected to be BA.5 rose from 25.1% of new cases for the week ending June 20 to 33.4% of new cases for the week ending June 27.
[BA.5 is thought to be more easily spread and caught, and though nothing suggests it causes more serious cases than other strains, if cases go up, serious cases will go up as a proportion of that.

EDIT: From the article in the comments:
A research team led by the University of Tokyo expressed its view that the coronavirus’s omicron subvariant BA.5 spreading across Japan “tends to proliferate more in the lungs than the BA.2 strain, which is currently mainstream, and may be highly pathogenic as well as infectious, based on experiments using human cells and animals.”]

Photo 14
Kabuki John Cusack says the government is not considering measures such as restrictions on movements at the moment. [I didn’t actually need to share this info, I just wanted to say “Kabuki John Cusack.”]

Photo 15
So if we are not going to have Manbo,etc., what measures can we take?
Wada: Although it is important to take measures that protect those at risk of developing serious symptoms, and to protect medical and old-people care systems, at the current stage practicing the various [ThorPreMe individual] prevention measures sufficiently means that we don’t have to halt socio-economic activity.
Mizuno: Since BA.5 is a substrain of omicron and not a totally new strain, as long as we shore up the medical system, I don’t think it will end up being a big problem.

Photo 16
The current hospital bed occupancy rates for Tokyo and Osaka are 29.8% and 24.1% respectively. [OK, but just to note that cases (though not hospitalizations maybe) are currently doubling every week…]

Photo 17
Suggested measures:
1. When you are out and about, if you are indoors somewhere, wear a mask. When eating, drinking or talking, even if the air conditioner is on, make sure that you have ventilation too.
2. Get your third covid jab soon if you haven’t already done so.
3. If you have even a slight fever, cough or sore throat, don’t go out.

Photo 18
Given Tokyo and the country as a whole’s sudden explosion in cases, the government has decided to postpone the introduction of a nationwide “Go To Travel”-style sightseeing subsidy scheme.

Photo 19
However, it has decided to extend the so-called “Prefecture citizens discount scheme” (where travel discounts are offered if you travel “locally” within six blocks that the country has been divided into (e.g. so an Osaka resident could get a discount for a trip to Kyoto, as it is within the same designated Kansai block) until the end of August.