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

Day 781 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 in these headlines, but there was some Go To Travel news in the business section.

Tokyo story from the 9pm news last night and numbers from the website.

The interesting story today was that Tabelog has been sued for damages over their rating system.

Photo 2a

But first the numbers:

15515 new cases confirmed

[vs. 16813 for the same day last week. 20680 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

35 prefectures in triple figures

9 prefectures in double figures

Tokyo on 1819 [vs. 1876 same day last week]

Osaka on 1213 [vs. 1419 same day last week]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 22

[Quite a lot compared to around a week of about 10-14. 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 44, down 9 vs. the previous day.

20 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 30998.

Total recorded cases at 9110940.

Recovered cases at 8915727 (around 18,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 164,215 (down around 3000 vs the previous day.

Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.8%.

Photo 03

Tokyo’s 7-day average for new cases stands at 1542, 86% of the previous week’s average (as of yesterday).

[I guess they had to move to showing that the *average* is down, as the day vs. same day last week numbers were UP for one day yesterday, breaking a 32-day streak of decreases.]

Photo 04

Tokyo’s monitoring panel published a latest covid situation report yesterday in which they lowered the Tokyo alert scale down a notch to Stage 2 – the infection situation is improving but caution is still needed. [It is the first time in 5 months that the scale has been at Stage 2.]

Photo 05

[So, I was only vaguely aware that we already had a limited Go To Travel in place.]

Called “Prefectural Citizen Discount”, each of Japan’s prefectures can offer travel discounts and shopping vouchers to residents using government subsidies for travel within the prefecture and the surrounding areas (basically the country is divided into 6 blocks [so for example, citizens in Kansai are eligible for travel within Kansai]).

Photo 06

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said on Wednesday he plans to expand coverage of the program to the entire country in early July if the coronavirus situation further improves.

Photo 07

The maximum discount is currently 5,000 yen per person per night.

When the travel area is expanded to the whole country, the government plans to increase the ceiling to 8,000 yen per person per night if public transport is used.

Photo 08

As for vouchers, for buying souvenirs, the current system offers a flat discount of 2000 yen.

Under the new system, the voucher offer will be lowered to 1,000 yen for travel on weekends and national holidays, but raised to 3,000 yen for weekdays. This step is aimed at reducing holiday congestion.

Photo 09

The subsidy program is expected to be in place through the end of August, excluding the Obon holidays.