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Covid-19: Japan faces its strongest wave of positive cases

2022-07-25T12:12:53.452Z


The Japanese country, until now relatively spared by the pandemic, is facing an influx of contaminations due to the Omicron BA.5 variant.


Japan had almost never exceeded the symbolic bar of 100,000 cases of Covid recorded in 24 hours.

Last week it happened five days in a row.

More than 200,000 positive cases were even recorded on Saturday alone, or more than 150,000 per day on average.

In short, the Japanese country is facing its strongest since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The very frequent wearing of the mask, a high vaccination rate and the closing of the borders have, among other factors, allowed it to display a number of deaths much lower than in comparable countries.

But this is not enough to stop the spread of the Omicron BA.5 variant, highly transmissible and now the majority in Japan.

“We expect the number of new infections to continue to increase,” the minister responsible for the response to Covid-19, Daishiro Yamagiwa, even warned on Sunday.

The government does not intend to reinstate travel restrictions as the summer holidays approach, in particular because variants belonging to the Omicron family carry a lower risk of severe form than previous strains of SARS-CoV-2.

Still, hospital services have to take care of more and more Covid patients.

And this outbreak of contamination also affects the number of daily deaths of patients diagnosed with Covid.

This has gone, in two weeks, from 14 to nearly 50. The curve remains far from the peak reached in mid-February (nearly 250 deaths per day), but it should continue to climb.

2nd extended booster dose

The government calls on the population to be cautious, and it has nevertheless extended the 2nd booster dose of vaccine to caregivers (in addition to people aged at least 60 and adults at risk).

Some local authorities are going further, reports the Japan Times.

The governor of the province of Okinawa has - for example - declared a state of medical emergency, encouraging the population not to go to the emergency room for a minor health problem.

Several regions intend to encourage teleworking even more than currently, and some of them no longer consider children who meet Covid-positive peers at school or nursery as contact cases.

The goal is to prevent parents from having to keep their children designated as contact cases and therefore forced to isolate themselves at home, and therefore cannot go to work.

Already, hospitals have to reduce the number of surgeries due to a lack of staff, many employees being infected or contact cases, reports the Kyodo News agency.

Some emergency services even had to close.

Source: leparis

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