20200712 (Sunday) Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of probably 1): Main News
See photo captions for stories.
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Today’s Japan Covid-related NHK morning news topics:
– Third consecutive day of over 200 new cases in Tokyo
One minor aside to the disaster-level rains in Kyushu: volunteers have to be careful of both heatstroke (because they are wearing masks) and infection (as a result, many places are actually only allowing volunteers from their own local area rather than letting people come in from urban areas).
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386 new cases yesterday [basically double the numbers from just 9 days ago]
206 in Tokyo
35 in Kanagawa, 35 in Saitama, 13 in Chiba
9 in Fukuoka.
5 in Kagoshima
A solid 13 in quarantine after coming back from overseas.
[I am no longer listing all prefectures…Presumably you know enough Kanji to find the one you live in]
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206 new cases in Tokyo is the third day over 200.
[You have to go back to mid-April for the single other day over 200]
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About 70% of those cases are people in their 20s and 30s.
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Shawties and ballers with a bottle full of bub and into getting rubbed roll 48 deep in da covid positive test case club.
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And right on the other end of the scale, Bunkyo ward reports that a licensed daycare nursery where cases had already been confirmed has 1 new case for staff, and 18 further positives for children.
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None of them have serious symptoms, according to the ward office.
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Untraceable cases were not quite half, at 101.
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35 in Kanagawa is their most cases since the end of the State of Emergency.
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At US base Camp Hansen in Futenma, there has been a total of over 61 cases. [It doesn’t actually specify since when, and I believe the base has been cagey about providing exact figures.]
MZ: It all originated from a party on July 4.
MG: The military can only give out so much information about how many cases are on base, or how many military people are affected. The reason for this is for operational security reasons. Bigger number, “weaker” force, also I bet among other things. Hence why the US didn’t post too much about the cases on the USS Roosevelt. It’ll give the “enemy” a sense that they can do something (which most of the time they won’t).
I’m a veteran and while I understand the anger In Okinawa, this only adds fuel to the fire in trying to remove the base (i did a research paper on the bases in Okinawa).
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Kansai had a brisk day with 28 new cases in Osaka, 9 in Kyoto, 7 in Nara, 5 in Hyogo and 4 in Wakayama.
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One of the Hyogo cases is a junior high school student at the school in Tarumi where a teacher was recently confirmed infected. [More on this later in the bulletin]
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[While the government is saying that the medical system is not currently under pressure, and the emphasis has been on largely mild case in young people, that doesn’t mean that in-patients haven’t been on the rise.] This graphs shows a rise from just over 200 patients to just over 500 patients in the last 14 days.
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Having said that, the number of serious cases patients has remained low with no rise currently indicated. [This graph is from a different channel and the guy speaking has been something of a naysayer, and his quote says: “One of the special qualities of this disease is its ability to turn serious very quickly.”]
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Anyway, Tokyo metro government [while saying that the rise in cases is due to expanded testing], has requested medical facilities to boost the number of available beds for Corona in-patients from 1000 to 3000.
MBC: So that means that since March they had done nothing? Germany prepared 20.000 beds from January to March!
SY: No, they expanded the number of beds during that time, and then started to allow the hospitals to go back to normal as the cases died down. Keeping beds free for patients while turning down regular surgeries is really hurting the hospitals.
Basically now there is an understanding that the hospitals will ramp up and down at the city’s request (and presumably at least partially at their expense).
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This medical center has been asked to expand its capacity to 39 beds [in the ICU, I believe].
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Back to Kobe, because this was quite convoluted.
As mentioned before, the girl who tested positive was a student of Tarumi junior high school.
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On the 4th of this month, a male teacher of that school tested positive.
And the city moved to test 70 students and staff members.
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All of them tested negative, so school resumed on July 9th.
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After coming home from school on the 9th, one girl [presumably not in the tested group] complained of feeling lethargic. And yesterday she was confirmed positive.
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The girl had taken this teacher’s class on July 3.
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All students for the grade that the male teacher gives lessons for have now been instructed to stay home until July 17.
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The students and homeroom teacher from the girl’s class will be given a PCR test and asked to isolate at home until July 23.