08 July 2021 (Thursday) – Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of maybe 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers

See photo captions for stories.

Photo 01a
Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive?
All I know is the way I feel,
When it’s real, I keep it alive

Photo 01b
Japan covid-related topics from NHK’s 7am news bulletin today.
– State of Emergency [likely] to be declared in Tokyo
– Gearing up to request places stop serving alcohol
– 38 million doses: Where is the vaccine stock?
There was more stuff on landslide shenanigans, and an interesting piece on APD, where your hearing is OK but you can’t process audio in noisy environments. They are launching a survey of 5000 children to see how far this problem has gone undiagnosed in Japan.

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2191 cases confirmed yesterday
[up vs. 1821 for the same day last week. FYI: 1779 for the same day two weeks ago.]
[Thursday a.m. (i.e. Wednesday) figures have generally been the highest of the week lately.]

[08 July 2191 Last human baby born by biological means.]

44 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new daily prefectural records appear to have been set.

Tokyo was a substantial 920.
[up vs. 714 for the same day last week.]

Osaka at 151
[vs. 108 for the same day last week]

Joining Tokyo and Osaka in triple figures were Tokyo’s neighbors:
Kanagawa 250
Chiba 139
Saitama 157
[Tokyo+3 account for 1466 or about 2/3 of today’s total]
[Aichi threatening to wake up too]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 11.

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14 deaths confirmed yesterday, for a total of 14916.

The total of current active serious cases stands at 480, down 1 on the previous day.

Total recorded cases at 812287.

Recovered cases at 779151 (up around 1800 on the previous day).
[brushes calculator’s smooth casing languidly with the back of his hand]
Total active cases are at 18220 (up 330 on the previous day), rising slightly.
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total is 2.24%, rising slightly

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Tokyo’s 920 is their first time over 900 since May 13.

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And their 18th straight day of being higher than the corresponding day of the previous week.

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The MHLW panel of experts met to discuss this yesterday.
They highlighted an increase in the number of people younger than 60 who were being hospitalized or who were serious cases.

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“The number of serious cases in the 40s and 50s appears to have exceeded those of the 4th Wave.”
[We are still presumably talking about a pretty small number of cases though.]

Photo 08
They are concerned about the pressure on hospital beds going forward.

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The government is looking to [re]impose a State of Emergency on Tokyo and extend the State of Emergency on Okinawa, both until August 22.
[I was quite surprised by this news, but perhaps it is in response to their (relative) spanking in the recent Tokyo assembly election.]

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Under the SofE, the government intends to request that Tokyo eating and drinking establishments [once again] refrain from serving alcohol.

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Additionally, the government plans to extend Manbo measures until August 22 on Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba and Osaka [Osaka being at their own request].
However, the SofE will be lifted as scheduled on July 11 in Hokkaido, Aichi, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka.
[Aichi is looking like a dodgy call.]

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As per the usual routine, the government will run its plan by their panel of experts, report and do a Q&A in the Diet and then make an official decision [announcement] at Strategic HQ this evening.

[It seems I gave erroneous information when I said the other day that the Diet was on its summer recess?]

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So except for the first week of January and a three week period in late March/early April, Tokyo will have been in an SofE or under Manbo for the best part of 8 months by Aug 22.

[Surely this is a damning indictment of the effectiveness of the government’s measures?]

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Here’s how the SofE will fit around the Olympics [yellow line] and Paralympics [green(?) line].

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Which leaves the question of whether the Olympics will be held with or without spectators.

The government guidelines for events in general under SofE is half capacity up to a cap of 5000 spectators with events needing as a general rule to end at 9pm.

[The current policy for the Olympics was a cap of 10000 spectators, and a decision is yet to be taken on how this will be adjusted (but could come as soon as tomorrow or even this evening).

There are a number of proposals under discussion.]

For event venues in Tokyo, one proposal is to align with the 5000-person cap.

But another proposal on the table is to have no spectators at all Tokyo Olympic events.

For venues where events will continue after 9pm: It is expected that they will decide to hold the opening and closing ceremony and athletics events with no spectators. [I don’t know whether they will still let in the 10,000 or so IOC members and related cronies though.]

For venues outside of Tokyo, there is also a proposal to hold events without spectators.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210707/p2g/00m/0sp/064000c

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The five stakeholder groups will make the final decision about this.

[As I said, we should know by tomorrow at the latest.]

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Guess who’s Bach?

IOC chair Bach will be landing in Japan today.

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He will do a 3-day quarantine at a Tokyo hotel [I am betting it won’t be a government-designated APA though] during which time he will participate in the meetings regarding spectator decisions, etc. online.

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Where is the stock of 38 million vaccine doses?

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Local authorities have been cancelling vaccination appointments [for new first jabbers] as they have not been receiving the amounts of vaccine they requested.

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According to HellaWella, 88.25 million doses of Pfizer vaccine have been distributed to the local authorities and only 49.5 million of these doses have been registered in their tracking system as having been used.

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HellaWella maintains it is possible that up to 38.75 million doses are being held in storage at clinics, etc.

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The central government has requested that local authorities use their supplied stock properly.

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Local authorities maintain that they are holding stocks for second jabs, and that HellaWella vaccination figures are low because local authorities, clinics, etc. have not been able to keep up with data entry into the system…

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…and therefore in reality, their supplies of spare vaccine are actually quite limited.”

[NHK took no position on who was right…]