12 July 2022, Tuesday — Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers

Day 806 of doing these daily posts continuously.

See photo captions for stories.

Photo 01a
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
Chairperson Omi [of the govt. expert panel]: We have entered the 7th wave.

Abe’s funeral is today.
There was an interesting piece on pools disappearing from public schools, and brief mention of the possibility of everybody being asked to conserve gas (cooking and heating gas, not gasoline) this winter.

Photo 2a
37143 new cases confirmed
[vs. 16808 for the same day last week, 9572 the same day two weeks ago.]
[Tuesday a.m. (i.e. Monday) figures are traditionally the lowest of the week, but the numbers have more than doubled from same day last week.]

47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new records for daily cases today.

Nowhere with five digits.
Quadruple figures in 8 prefectures:
Fukuoka, Hyogo, Osaka, Aichi, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba and Tokyo [vs. 4 prefectures same day last week]
37 prefectures in triple figures [vs. 32 prefectures same day last week]
2 prefectures in double figures [vs. 11 prefectures same day last week]
Nowhere in single figures

Tokyo on 6231 [vs. 2772 same day last week (2.2 times higher)]
Osaka on 2515 [vs. 1150 same day last week (almost than 2.2 times higher)]

The number of positives at immigration testing was 19.
[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 75, down 5 vs. the previous day.

15 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31460

Total recorded cases at 9747461
Recovered cases at 9309537 (around 20,000 recovered cases up from the previous day)

Total active cases are at 406,464 (up around 17000 vs the previous day and back over 400k).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of historical cases is 4.16%.

Photo 03
Omi and some other experts apparently visited Kishida the other day to give him the expert view on the current covid situation.
They explained that the background to the current rise in cases was the spread of the BA.5 variant and waning of immunity as time passes since vaccination.

Photo 04
In order to avoid pressure on the medical system, the experts have asked that central government and the prefectures have the medical, testing and vaccination systems shored up…

Photo 05
…and that the central government calls on people to practice ThorPreMe.

Photo 06
Omi: “The situation had calmed down once, but now there’s no doubt that a new wave is happening.

Photo 07
“We have entered the 7th wave.”

Photo 08
[However, there are no plans to reimpose any restrictions.]
“Even without restricting movements, even without declaring Manbo…”

Photo 09
“…it is possible to ride out this wave with basic prevention measures: testing, vaccines, ventilation.

Photo 10
So, there was a piece on how pools are disappearing from public schools.
Namely, many schools are electing to hand over swimming instruction to private entities like Central Sports (one of the kids actually said “Central” even though this is NHK and they like to avoid that kind of promo).
School pools are only used for a certain period in the summer term.
And they are outside so lessons are cancelled if it gets too hot, etc.
Central Sports provides 7 instructors for the class, allowing people to be divided and taught according to their current skill level.
And it’s indoor, so the sun is not beating down on the kids poolside.

Photo 11
NHK reckons that 20% of school swimming lessons in the capital have switched over to private institutions.

Photo 12
Part of the background is the aging out of pools, many of which are over 50 years old and are due for some major refurbishment.

Photo 13
They ran the numbers.
If you amortize the costs of a school pool on the assumption of 80 years, it comes out at 7.7 million yen per year (220 million yen to build it, 200 million yen refurbishment and 2.34 million yen per year for running it) vs. 5.07 million yen per year for private institutions (3.47 million is usage fees and 1.6 million yen to go there and back by bus). [Obviously, the math will work out differently in different places, depending on how close the nearest private pool is, etc. And wow, 2 million yollars to build a swimming pool – I thought they were mostly just a hole in the ground 😊]

Photo 14
With disruption to the gas supply due to the war in the Ukraine and strained relations with Russia, the government is beginning to discuss whether it will need to (a) set up a campaign to encourage people to use less gas at home (turn down the bath temp? I don’t know), and if the situation gets really tight, (b) force industries to restrict gas use.