03 June 2022, Friday– Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers
Day 767 of doing these daily posts continuously.
See photo captions for stories.
Photo 01
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
A spate of covid subsidy frauds
Exclusive: Expert panel to review covid countermeasures, with review of “Manbo” in mind
The numbers had to be taken from the website.
The news led with “Shibahara wins the mixed doubles in the French Open.”
Like apparently, she did it alone? Turns out her doubles partner is gaijin so he doesn’t get a namecheck.
Do you remember when it was “Japanese guy wins a Nobel prize” and no one mentioned he was one of a trio of scientists being recognized for that particular prize?
Photo 2a
[From the NHK News website]
20680 new cases confirmed
[vs. 31008 for the same day last week. 39642 the same day two weeks ago.]
47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new daily case records (probably – the website doesn’t specifically flag these).
Nowhere with five digits
Quadruple figures in 6 prefectures:
Okinawa, Fukuoka, Osaka, Aichi, Tokyo and Hokkaido.
35 prefectures in triple figures
6 prefectures in double figures
Tokyo on 2335 [vs. 3391 same day last week]
Osaka on 1531 [vs. 2524 same day last week]
[Tokyo has been down vs. same day previous week for 20 straight days now]
The number of positives at immigration testing was 5
[Yep, this number has lost its meaning now that border testing has been relaxed from yesterday even as double the number of people are being allowed into the country. After several days of over 100 cases at the border, we are suddenly down to 5.]
Photo 02b
[From the NHK News website]
The total of current active serious cases stands at 92, down 3 from the previous day.
24 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 30695
Total recorded cases at 8897307
Recovered cases at 8600830 (around 38,000 recovered cases from the previous day)
Total active cases are at 265,782 (down around 18000 vs the previous day).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 2.98%.
Photo 03
NHK did a big thing on covid subsidy fraud this morning.
The two high profile cases at the moment are (a) the one we covered yesterday about the 7 tax officials who helped 200 make false claims in order to raise funds for crypto investing, and (b) this guy (who is still on the run) and his whole family who helped over 100 businesses file fake claims then took a consulting fee of around 150,000 yen off the top.
Photo 04
As of April 30, 3655 people have been arrested for receipt of unlawful subsidies.
The total amount of loss (for these cases only) stands at 31 million yollars.
Photo 05
[I am leaning heavily on a machine translation of a related article here.]
[The government’s panel of experts examining measures against covid19 has compiled a draft summary of issues based on discussions to date. The committee says that the current priority measures for preventing the spread of the disease should be reviewed.]
According to the report, (1) although prefectures made plans to secure hospital beds and other facilities when the new corona infection spread, in some areas it was difficult to secure sufficient medical personnel, [and (2) the number of tests did not increase due to a shortage of protective clothing at medical institutions and the pressure on the admin systems and staff at public health centers.]
Photo 06
The report also states that efforts to nurture companies capable of promptly developing vaccines and therapeutic drugs were inadequate.
Photo 07
The report also wonders whether there were times when it could be taken as if there were discrepancies between the pronouncements of expert panel members and official government policy.
Photo 08
The report therefore feels that there was a problem with how “risk communication” was conducted.
Photo 09
The panel will discuss the issues in the draft summary with a view to making recommendations to the government in the middle of this month.
Photo 10
I’ll just wrap up by saying let’s be careful out there in the current heat, particularly as we seem to be in the middle of sports day season at schools.
In this story, 31 people were transported to hospital with heatstroke, one in serious condition, at a sports day event at a combined girls junior high and high school in Osaka.