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

Day 784 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 and I had to get the numbers from the websites.

I picked and added a couple of interesting non-covid tidbits from this morning and last night’s 7pm news too.

Photo 2a

[Taken from the NHK website]

13160 new cases confirmed

[vs. 13394 for the same day last week. 15109 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 2 prefectures:

Okinawa, Tokyo

32 prefectures in triple figures

13 prefectures in double figures

Tokyo on 1622 [vs. 1546 same day last week, slightly up]

Osaka on 883 [vs. 1151 same day last week]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 17

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

Photo 02b

[Taken from the NHK website]

The total of current active serious cases stands at 41, up 2 vs. the previous day.

10 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31046

Total recorded cases at 9153632

Recovered cases at 8964909 (around 15,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 157,677 (down around 3000 vs the previous day).

Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.72%.

Photo 03

[I posted the article for this yesterday, so I will just pull the relevant bits of it here.]

A group of researchers says tests of two coronavirus drugs on hamsters indicate that the risk of drug-resistant variants emerging is limited.

The study was conducted by Professor Kawaoka Yoshihiro from the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Medical Science and other researchers.

They used hamsters with suppressed immune systems and infected them with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The group then administered Lagevrio, which is also known as molnupiravir, and another drug developed by Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi. Lagevrio is already in use. An application for Shionogi to be used in Japan has been submitted.

Photo 04

The results for both drugs showed that the amounts of the virus in the hamsters’ lungs dropped to one 10,000th on the second day of treatment. But some amounts of the virus remained because of the suppressed immune systems.

On Day 9, the researchers checked the therapeutic efficacy of the drugs against the virus extracted from the hamsters. They say they found no resistant variants.

The group says some antiviral drugs can cause resistant variants to emerge in several days.

Kawaoka says further studies are needed to see if results will be the same in humans, but at least the tests on animals suggest that the two drugs carry a low risk of leading to resistant variants.

Photo 05

So just a public service announcement: people are getting heatstroke, and today and most of this week is going to be 30C in a lot of places. Take care and keep hydrated.

Photo 06

[There have been a spate of water accidents lately.

A 13 and 14 year old drowned in a river recently.

A 63 year old man died when he fell into an irrigation ditch while cutting grass on an embankment.

A 10 year old fell into a fast-flowing irrigation channel, his mother went in after him and they both died.]

So here the advice is: Be careful around water. Don’t go near rice fields and such after heavy rain (they irrigation channels may be submerged), and if you are doing grass cutting etc. near water, try to do it in groups rather than alone.

Photo 07

Lastly, I’ve been saying that this would happen one day, but I didn’t realize it had already happened. From today, all drones of over 100g have to be registered.

The penalties for flying an unregistered drone is up to a year in jail and/or a fine of half a million yen.