Japan began vaccinating health professionals against the coronavirus at the beginning of a cautious inoculation program, AFP reports.
Japan has so far approved only the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and started administering the first vaccines at a Tokyo hospital on Wednesday morning.
Tokyo Medical Center director Kazuhiro Araki became the first person in Japan to receive the vaccine outside of clinical trials.
Speaking to reporters, he said:
The vaccine plays an important role in anti-coronavirus measures. So I thought, as a director, that I should take the lead and take the picture.
I don’t really like getting injections. But it wasn’t painful, so it was good. I was relieved.
Twelve unit employees are being vaccinated on Wednesday, in front of the media, with a total of 800 in line to receive the vaccines – including administrative staff.
Japan is planning to initially vaccinate 40,000 health workers across the country and will study the effects of the two-dose vaccine on 20,000 of them.
Doses will be administered three weeks apart, with people in the study group being asked to keep daily records of any side effects or reactions, local media said.
The country then expects to vaccinate about 3.7 million health professionals as of March – with vaccines for about 36 million people aged 65 and over as of April.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said he takes “seriously the fact that it took time” for Japan to start vaccinating compared to some other countries.
“But today we started, and it is the government’s responsibility to prepare the environment for many Japanese to be vaccinated.”
The Japanese minister who oversees the vaccination, Taro Kono, told the media on Tuesday that there was still no deadline for vaccinating the general population.
He also acknowledged that he “had no idea” how much of the population will be vaccinated by this summer’s postponed Olympics.
Japan’s approval process has been slower than in some other countries because it has required additional domestic testing.
But the country has also seen a much more limited outbreak compared to hard-hit countries like Britain or the United States.