Japan delivered its first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, even when a provincial governor became the first senior politician to call for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics this summer.
The first recipient of the vaccine in Japan – more than two months after inoculations began in the United States and the United Kingdom – was Kazuhiro Araki, head of the Tokyo Medical Center. He received the jab from BioNTech and Pfizer on television along with a group of 12 doctors and nurses.
The late start of vaccinations in Japan illustrated how many countries in East Asia and the Pacific, having contained Covid-19 relatively well, opted for a slow implementation for their immunization campaigns.
This means that many people in Japan will still not have been immunized by the Tokyo Olympics in July, making it difficult to hold the event with spectators.
Taro Kono, the minister responsible for launching the vaccine, said that a group of 40,000 medical professionals will receive the first round of injections, followed by approximately 3.7 million doctors, nurses, pharmacists, ambulance drivers and other health professionals.
They will be followed by the elderly from April. If vaccine supplies allow, Japan hopes to complete immunization for the elderly in two months and three weeks.
However, Japan’s insistence on local clinical testing means that it has only approved the BioNTech / Pfizer jab and depends on supplies from the American company’s factory in Belgium – supplies that the EU is desperate to guarantee for itself.
“I have been talking to the EU ambassador in Tokyo,” said Kono. “We are very confident that the EU will give us the OK for the Pfizer vaccine. But as the volume increases later, we hope that the EU will endorse all of this. “
As the vaccination campaign started on Wednesday, Tatsuya Maruyama, the governor of Shimane Prefecture, said he did not want to host the torch relay and called for the games to be canceled.
“If the current situation does not improve, the Tokyo Olympics should not continue,” said Maruyama. He said that contact tracking is inadequate and that running the games risks spreading Covid-19 to city halls like Shimane, a sparsely populated region in western Japan.
“Tokyo has not been able to control the spread of Covid-19,” he said. “It is difficult to see how we can cooperate with the Olympics or with the torch relay that is due to pass through Shimane in May.”
Tokyo registered 300-400 new cases of Covid-19 in the past few days, compared to more than 2,000 a day in early January. Maruyama signaled that he was not satisfied with support for business in Shimane, which, unlike Tokyo, is not in a state of emergency.
Tokyo 2020 – currently without leadership after its president Yoshiro Mori resigned in a sexism dispute – is struggling to keep the Olympics amid growing public skepticism and calls for cancellation.
After a jury meeting on Wednesday, Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto emerged as the most likely candidate for the job, who would put the games under direct political control. Hashimoto competed in speed skating and track cycling in seven different games.
If other prefectures follow Shimane, especially those due to Olympic events or camps for national athletes, this will increase the pressure on Yoshihide Suga. The prime minister promised to carry on the Olympics as a symbol of humanity’s ability to overcome Covid-19.
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