TOKYO (Reuters) – Coronavirus cases in the Greater Tokyo area are showing signs of increasing, Japanese Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said on Friday, raising questions about whether the state of emergency could be lifted on schedule for March 21st.
The Japanese government last week extended the emergency declaration to Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures for 14 days, saying that the cases of COVID-19 had not dropped enough and that new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus posed a threat.
The decision on whether a state of emergency can be lifted in the Tokyo area, which accounts for about 30% of Japan’s population, would be made after hearing expert opinions, Tamura said in televised comments.
“The survey of measures will be based on the implementation of a system to ensure that there is no recovery in cases,” he said.
Restrictions like reduced business hours for restaurants and bars helped to reduce new cases in Tokyo to about a tenth of the peak of 2,520 cases on January 7. But the numbers are far from Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s goal of bringing the seven-day average to 70% from the previous week.
“The number of new positive cases has stopped decreasing and we need to be very vigilant about the possibility of a resurgence due to mutant strains,” Koike said on Friday during a meeting with health experts.
The seven-day average of new cases in Tokyo has stagnated in mid-200 since the end of February, while the daily count has surpassed 300 for the second consecutive day on Thursday.
Tokyo – and Japan – are rushing to keep coronavirus cases under control and vaccinations well underway as it prepares to host the Summer Olympics, scheduled to start on July 23. Overall, Japan has so far reported about 441,000 cases of coronavirus and 8,400 deaths.
Japan’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign began just last month with healthcare professionals and has been progressing slowly, hampered by a lack of supplies.
Japan expects to receive 9,188 packages of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE each week in May, or about 1.8 million bottles, compared to 10,475 packages for the entire month of April, said Taro Kono, the minister in charge of the effort. vaccination.
“In May, we will receive 9,188 cases a week. That will be worth about 10 million doses a week,” Kono said at a news conference. “We expect the volume of June to be even greater than that of May.”
In a move to make the most of the vaccine available, Japan will use specialized syringes capable of extracting six doses from each bottle of Pfizer from the week of April 12 to inoculate medical professionals, said Kono.
Most of Japan’s syringe stock consists of regular versions that can take just five doses from each vial, raising fears that millions of doses may be wasted.
Kono declined to provide details about purchasing six-dose syringes, such as which manufacturers will supply them to Japan.
Kono also said that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will be vaccinated before taking a trip to the United States next month for a meeting with American President Joe Biden.
Suga will go to the United States in the first half of April and become the first foreign leader to meet face to face with Biden, the chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, told reporters earlier.
(Reporting by Rocky Swift, Chang-Ran Kim and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Gerry Doyle and Lincoln Feast)