30 June 2022, Thursday — Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers
Day 794 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 covid-y in the headlines, but I picked up a tailend tidbit on aiports, and threw in a mention of Monkey Pox.
As usual though most news was: Boy is it still hot, weather-wise. Tokyo is asking people to save electricity (but not skimp on the air conditioning) and election coverage is taking up the slack that might usually be afforded to covid news.
Photo 2a
[Taken from the NHK website]
23346 new cases confirmed
[so this is solidly up vs. both 17285 for the same day last week, 16592 the same day two weeks ago.]
[In fact, the last time this was over 20,000 was June 02, so exactly 4 weeks ago.]
47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new daily case records (probably).
Nowhere with five digits
Quadruple figures in 6 prefectures:
Fukuoka rejoining the party with Okinawa, Osaka, Aichi, Kanagawa and Tokyo
37 prefectures in triple figures
6 prefectures in double figures
Nowhere in single figures
Tokyo on 3803 [vs. 2329 same day last week, quite a bit up] [The highest since May 25 (3929)]
Osaka on 2222 [vs. 1414 same day last week; Osaka up too]
The number of positives at immigration testing was 17
[Border testing was relaxed even as the number of people being allowed into the country has doubled from June 01.]
Photo 02b
[Taken from the NHK website]
The total of current active serious cases stands at 50, up 4 vs. the previous day.
17 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31280
Total recorded cases at 9309827
Recovered cases at 9107118 (around 14,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)
Total active cases are at 171,429 (up around 10000 vs the previous day).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.84%.
Photo 03
[Apologies for the photo quality, this is due to a confluence of circumstances.]
International flights have resumed between Haneda and Ginpo – for the first time in 2 years and 3 months. For the time being, the plan is to have 8 return flights a week on this route.
Photo 04
In preparation for the possibility of a monkeypox outbreak in Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) has established a new system that will allow the administration of a smallpox drug (smallpox has similar symptoms) [on an experimental basis].
The ministry is also considering whether to inoculate medical workers and welfare center staff against the disease.
[More from a machine translation of a relevant article:
The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) has established a new system to administer Tecobilimat, an oral medication developed by an American pharmaceutical company as a treatment for smallpox, to patients with monkeypox in case the disease is confirmed in Japan.
This drug has been approved for monkeypox in the EU (European Union), but not in Japan, so the Ministry is making an exception to allow this as a “specific clinical research” to investigate the effectiveness and safety of the drug.]