There are concerns that if nursery school and certified child care facilities are closed, working parents may not be able to go to work as they will be unable to leave their children at such facilities.
The nationwide number of such patients hit a record high of some 264,000 as of Tuesday, up about 14-fold from two weeks earlier.
Students across the world who have been unable to enter Japan for study due to the current COVID-19 entry ban mostly feel that their mental health has deteriorated, a private survey showed Thursday.
Doctors say they are stretched almost to breaking point and that seeing more patients has become increasingly difficult. Japan reported a record 62,610 new infections on Tuesday, topping 60,000 for the first time.
The number of such facilities suspending services as of last Thursday, excluding privately operated or locally licensed ones, increased fourfold in a week along with the spike in COVID-19 cases and well exceeded the previous high of 185 in September, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
According to Japan’s health ministry, the combined total of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms announced by local governments across Japan stood at 51 on Jan. 1. The figure climbed to 89 in a week, to 233 in two weeks and topped 400 on Friday for the first time in about three months, in line with the increase of new infection cases.
PM Kishida pledged to boost medical treatments for people recovering at home or at lodging facilities, and to accelerate booster vaccinations, noting that he plans to “calmly advance responses (against the omicron variant) based on the latest information, without excessive fear.”
“The omicron variant seems to have a higher transmissibility, but also is less likely to cause serious symptoms,” Kishida said to reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office. “But if the infection spreads rapidly among the elderly, the percentage of people who become seriously ill could increase.”
Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward started giving third COVID-19 vaccine shots to residents aged 65 or over Friday, at a time when the highly contagious omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is spreading in many parts of Japan.
The southwestern Japan city of Fukuoka began to give a third shot of novel coronavirus vaccines Wednesday, earlier than initially planned, to residents aged 65 or over.
Barrier Free Japan