06 July 2022, Wednesday — Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers
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See photo captions for stories.
Photo 01
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
Nothing covid-y in the 7am bulleting but quite a big feature in yesterday’s 9pm show.
Typhoon, KDDI, Ukraine, election and trouble for Boris Johnson were the other main topics.
There was an interesting feature on how people remember attitudes to work and family during the Showa era too. One survey respondent, for example, recalls that during her job interview they made her promise to quit the company if she got married.
Photo 2a
36189 new cases confirmed
[vs. 19386 for the same day last week, 15384 the same day two weeks ago.]
That’s up 1.8 times vs. the same day last week [and the highest figure since May 20].
47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
New records for daily cases today in Kumamoto, Shimane and Ehime.
Nowhere with five digits
Quadruple figures in 10 prefectures:
Kumamoto joining the quadruple club, Okinawa topping 2000, Fukuoka, Hyogo, Osaka, Aichi, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba and Tokyo [5 prefectures same day last week]
35 prefectures in triple figures [29 prefectures same day last week]
2 prefectures in double figures [13 prefectures same day last week]
Nowhere in single figures
Tokyo on 5302 [vs. 2514 same day last week]
Osaka on 4523 [vs. 2302 same day last week]
The number of positives at immigration testing was 22.
[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 60, down 2 vs. the previous day.
20 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31365
Total recorded cases at 9457508
Recovered cases at 9195982 (around 15,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)
Total active cases are at 230,161 (up around 21000 vs the previous day).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 2.43%.
Photo 03
Tokyo’s 5302 is their first time over 5000 since April 28 and more than double the number of cases for the same day last week.
Photo 04
The week-on-week infection increase for the country as a whole stands at 1.46.
42 prefectures have seen a rise vs. the previous week.
Shimane, Tottori, Oita and Wakayama have seen increase rates of more than 2.
[Interestingly, these are prefectures that kept infections down the best during previous waves. Looks like their lack of immunity is catching up with them. Or maybe they’ve just been seeing more tourists.]
Photo 05
Shimane’s 755 is a massive spike vs. their previous record 424 a couple of days ago.
Photo 06
Of Shimane’s infections yesterday, 410 were reported by the welfare center for Izumo city.
Photo 07
The Izumo mayor called it an emergency situation…
Photo 08
…and is calling for ThorPreMe [rather than an SofE].
Photo 09
[They got a different talking head to say the same things as Tateda said yesterday.]
Prof Matsumoto: Many restrictions have been lifted…
Photo 10
“…and people are coming into contact with others more frequently. This is a situation in which the disease can spread easily.”
Photo 11
“I think that we are also seeing some effect from the spread of the BA.5 variant which is said to be more easily transmissible.”
Photo 12
The prof also cautioned that we need to take precautions against heatstroke to avoid putting hospitals in a difficult position trying to figure out who has covid and who has heatstroke.
Photo 13
A couple of non-covid tidbits to finish:
Suntory has warned that the price of Beaujolais Nouveau is going to be higher this year (fuel costs, Ukraine-related supply chain disruption and presumably the weak yen).
A bottle that would have cost 2480 yen last year is expected to cost 3500 yen this year.
Photo 14
As per an article I posted yesterday, last year saw the govt. rake in record tax revenue for the second year running, at over 67 trillion yen.
Some of that is corporate profits from the weak yen and some of that is an improvement in the employment situation post covid.
However, the annual ordinary budget from the government is more than twice that at 142 trillion yen, with 57.6 trillion yen of this having to be covered with newly issued government bonds “despite strict financial management.” [Heads cocks 45 degrees in bemusement.]