Japan At the start of the precautionary inoculation program, healthcare workers have begun vaccinating against coronavirus, according to AFP reports.
Japan has so far only approved the Pfizer / Bioentech vaccine, and began administering the first shot at a hospital in Tokyo on Wednesday morning.
Kazuhiro Araki, director of Tokyo Medical Center, became the first Japanese person to receive the vaccine outside of clinical trials.
Speaking to reporters, he said:
Vaccines play an important role in anti-coronavirus action. So I thought as a director I should take the lead and get the shots.
I don’t like taking shots. But it wasn’t painful, so it was good. I was relieved.
Twelve employees are being vaccinated at the facility on Wednesday, in front of the media, with a total of line00 to get shots, including administrative staff.
Japan is initially considering vaccinating 40,000 healthcare workers across the country, and will study the effects of the two-dose vaccine on 20,000 of them.
According to local media, the dosage will be administered at three-week intervals, as the study group asked people to keep a daily record of any side effects or reactions.
The country then expects to vaccinate about 7. million million health workers by March – or jobs for about 36 million people aged one year or more from April.
Prime Minister Yoshihid Suga said he “takes seriously the fact that Japan is more serious about starting vaccinations than some other countries.”
“But today we start, and the government has a responsibility to prepare the environment so that many Japanese people can be vaccinated.”
There is no timeline for vaccinating the general population, Minister Taro Kono, who oversees Japan’s vaccinations, told the media on Tuesday.
He also admitted that he had “no idea” how many people would be vaccinated by the postponed Olympics this summer.
Japan’s approval process has been slow compared to some other countries because it needs additional domestic tests.
But even in this country there is a much more limited outbreak than in severely affected countries like Britain or the United States.
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