The Japan Para Alpine Skiing Championships for people with disabilities were held on February 1st at the Sugadaira Kogen Pine Beak Ski Resort in Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, where two super giant slalom races were held.
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.
A 66-year-old man attacked three medical workers making a visit to his home near Tokyo on Thursday night, shooting two of them with a hunting gun including a doctor who was taken hostage and later confirmed dead, police said.
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.
Last April, two brothers in their 50s were found dead in a house in Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka City. The younger brother (56 years old at the time) had a severe intellectual disability, and the elder brother (57 years old at the time) was the sole caregiver.
Of the 175 railroad companies in Japan, including streetcars and monorails, only 97, or more than half, offer discounted fares for the ‘mentally disabled’, according to an internal document of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) has released internal documents.
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.
Hyogo Prefecture has become the first prefecture in Japan to use a new guidance system for the blind and visually impaired whereby the colour of traffic lights can be detected via a smartphone.
Barrier Free Japan