[ad_1]
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga urged the nation on Friday (December 25) to spend a quiet New Year’s period without the usual social gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which has nearly broken infection records. daily.
Suga also announced a US $ 2.6 billion package for hospitals treating COVID-19 patients who have been affected by the rapid increase in cases on the northern island of Hokkaido, as well as in large cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.
READ: Japan panel says people 65 and older should get COVID-19 vaccine priority
“I want you to have a quiet New Year,” the prime minister said at a press conference in Tokyo with the government’s top coronavirus expert, Shigeru Omi.
“Infections do not decrease and if we continue like this, we will not be able to prevent further spread of the virus.”
The country confirmed its first five cases of the newer variant of the virus that spreads faster in passengers arriving from the UK, Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said late Friday.
Suga called for strong quarantine measures at airports and those returning from the UK, Tamura said after his meeting with the prime minister.
Japan has banned entry from the UK, with the exception of returning Japanese citizens and those with residence permits.
READ: Japan will ban the entry of non-citizens from the United Kingdom by the new strain of the COVID-19 virus
Japan does not celebrate Christmas, but the New Year period is an extended national holiday, and many people generally travel back to their places of origin and spend time with family and friends.
Omi warned that it is essential that “all citizens move in the same direction” to control the health crisis.
“If we don’t reduce infections now, once they pick up again after the New Year period, it won’t be easy to reverse the downward trend,” he said. “It would take time and it would probably be impossible to control over a period of weeks,” he said.
Omi said that shared meals were a leading cause of infections and asked people to refrain from holding large gatherings and to limit meals to four people they regularly ate with, or less.
While Japan has avoided the huge numbers of infections seen in other parts of the world, the number of new daily cases surpassed 3,000 for the first time this month.
Tokyo reported 884 infections on Friday, close to Thursday’s record of 888.
HOSPITALS, VACCINES
To underscore the tension in hospitals, five national groups of doctors and other medical workers made an emergency request to Suga on Friday, calling for strong anti-pandemic measures and support for the medical sector.
With hospitals equipped to treat COVID-19 flooding, other hospitals are being forced to accept patients with the disease, according to Tsuyoshi Masuda, president of the Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions.
“These small and medium-sized hospitals, which have been supporting medical services in their respective regions, are facing a crisis that threatens their survival,” Masuda told reporters at a separate press conference on Friday.
He also warned that the risk of nosocomial infections was high in institutions not specialized in the treatment of infectious diseases.
Japan, with a population of 126 million, has reached agreements to purchase 290 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc, which is equivalent to 145 million people.
A Ministry of Health panel said that people 65 and older should be prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19, as well as front-line healthcare workers and people with underlying medical conditions.
It specified chronic heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, and chronic kidney disease, among others, as underlying conditions that should determine priority.
The panel’s recommendations would mean that 36 million older people and 8.2 million people with medical conditions would be the first to receive vaccinations.
CHECK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments
Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram
