Japan
Bangladesh to go for Covid vaccine coproduction soon: FM
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Saturday said Bangladesh will go for coproduction of Covid-19 vaccines soon, emphasizing that there is no alternative to production of vaccines locally.
"It's a coproduction. They (partner countries) will send it in bulk and we’ll do other things here - bottling, labeling and finishing," he told reporters after receiving the first consignment of 2,45,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan.
Dr Momen said the countries that went for coproduction of vaccines are doing well.
A cargo flight of Cathay Pacific Airways carried the vaccine doses that landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
Also read: India working to resume vaccine export to Bangladesh, reiterates Doraiswami
Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Naoki Ito, Health Services Division Secretary Lokman Hossain Miah and personal physician of the Prime Minister Professor Dr ABM Abdullah were present.
The vaccine doses came under the COVAX facility.
Olympics ceremony uses music from Japanese video games
The athletes of the Tokyo Olympics were greeted by a few familiar notes Friday night.
Those video game songs that get stuck in your head.
An orchestral medley of songs from iconic Japanese video games served as the soundtrack for the parade of countries at the opening ceremony. The arrangement included songs from games developed by SEGA, Capcom and Square Enix.
Video game themes are often maligned as annoying earworms, but in Japan, the music that accompanies games is considered an art form.
Video game composers are famous in Japan, and NieR, one of the series featured in the parade, has seen three of its soundtracks appear on Japanese music charts.
Read: Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium
The first song played Friday was “Roto’s Theme” from the Dragon Quest series. Dragon Quest was enormously influential as the first console role-playing game, launching a genre. The series became so popular in Japan that 300 students were arrested for truancy after they left school to purchase Dragon Quest III.
The music of the Final Fantasy series is among the most familiar to western audiences. The parade included the main Final Fantasy theme and “Victory Fanfare,” the song that plays when a player wins an encounter. Both arrangements have been part of the series from its first to its fifteenth installments.
Another well-known song that was featured was “Star Light Zone,” from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. In addition to appearing in the original game, a remixed version appeared in the DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
Many of the iconic themes from other Nintendo games, such as Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, weren’t played in the parade. And producers didn’t include many of the shorter jingles from early video games, such as Pac-Man and Asteroids.
Dhaka to receive 2.45 lakh AstraZeneca jabs from Tokyo Saturday
Some 2,45,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine are scheduled to arrive here on Saturday from Japan.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen will receive the vaccine doses that will come under COVAX facility.
A Cathay Pacific Airways flight will carry the vaccine doses that will land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the afternoon on the day.
Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki on Friday said Japan will provide in total 3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Bangladesh.
As Tokyo Games open, can Olympic flame burn away the funk?
Disputed, locked down and running a year late, the Tokyo Games begin at last on Friday night, a multinational showcase of the finest athletes of a world fragmented by disease — and an event steeped in the political and medical baggage of a relentless pandemic whose presence haunts every Olympic corner.
As the first pandemic Games in a century convene largely without spectators and opposed by much of the host nation, the disbelief and anger of those kept outside the near-deserted national stadium threaten to drown out the usual carefully packaged glitz and soaring rhetoric about sports and peace that are the hallmarks of the opening ceremony.
“‘The festival of peace’ is now starting in an unimaginably disastrous state,” the Asahi newspaper said in an editorial, citing “confusion, distrust and unease.”
Hand in hand with this feeling of calamity is a fundamental question about these Games as Japan, and large parts of the world, reel from the continuing gut punch of a pandemic that is stretching well into its second year, with cases in Tokyo approaching record highs this week: Will it be enough?
Read: Olympics, pandemic and politics: There’s no separating them
“It,” in this case, is the product that’s being packaged and sold, the commodity that has saved past Olympics when they’ve become mired in problems: the deep, intrinsic human attachment to the spectacle of sporting competition at the highest possible level.
Time and again, previous opening ceremonies have pulled off something that approaches magic. Scandals — bribery in Salt Lake City, censorship and pollution in Beijing, doping in Sochi — fade into the background when the sports begin.
But with people still falling ill and dying each day from the coronavirus, there’s a particular urgency to the questions about whether the Olympic flame can burn away the fear or provide a measure of catharsis — and even awe — after a year of suffering and uncertainty in Japan and around the world.
The sports have already begun — softball and soccer, for example — and some of the focus is turning toward the competition to come.
Can the U.S. women’s soccer team, for instance, even after an early, shocking loss to Sweden, become the first to win an Olympics following a World Cup victory? Can Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama win gold in golf after becoming the first Japanese player to win the Masters? Will Italy’s Simona Quadarella challenge American standout Katie Ledecky in the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle swimming races?
For now, however, it’s hard to miss how unusual these Games promise to be. The lovely national stadium is an isolated militarized zone, surrounded by huge barricades. Roads around it are sealed and businesses closed.
Read:Australia’s Brisbane selected to host 2032 Summer Olympic Games
Inside, the feeling of sanitized, locked-down quarantine carries over. Fans, who would normally be screaming for their countries and mixing with people from around the world, have been banned, leaving only a carefully screened contingent of journalists, officials, athletes and participants.
Olympics often face opposition, but there’s also usually a pervasive feeling of national pride. Japan’s resentment centers on the belief that it was strong-armed into hosting — forced to pay billions and risk the health of a largely unvaccinated, deeply weary public — so the IOC can collect its billions in media revenue.
“Sometimes people ask why the Olympics exist, and there are at least two answers. One is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to sport, and the other is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to aristocrats getting luxurious hotel rooms and generous per diems,” Bruce Arthur, a sports columnist for the Toronto Star, wrote recently.
How did we get here? A quick review of the past year and a half seems operatic in its twists and turns.
A once-in-a-century pandemic forces the postponement of the 2020 version of the Games. A fusillade of scandals (sexism and other discrimination and bribery claims, overspending, ineptitude, bullying) unfolds. People in Japan, meanwhile, watch bewildered as an Olympics considered a bad idea by many scientists actually takes shape.
“We will continue to try to have this dialogue with the Japanese people knowing we will not succeed 100%. That would be putting the bar too high,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “But we’re also confident that once the Japanese people see the Japanese athletes performing in these Olympic Games — hopefully successfully — that then the attitude will become less emotional.”
Japanese athletes, freed from onerous travel rules and able to train more normally, may indeed enjoy a nice boost over their rivals in some cases, even without fans. Judo, a sport that Japan is traditionally a powerhouse in, will begin Saturday, giving the host nation a chance for early gold.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
Still, while it’s possible that “people may come out of the Olympics feeling good about themselves and about Japan having hosted the Games against all odds,” Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, believes that such a scenario “is way too optimistic.”
The reality, for now, is that the delta variant of the virus is still rising, straining the Japanese medical system in places, and raising fears of an avalanche of cases. Only a little over 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. And there have been near daily reports of positive virus cases within the so-called Olympic bubble that’s meant to separate the Olympic participants from the worried, skeptical Japanese population.
For a night, at least, the glamor and message of hope of the opening ceremonies may distract many global viewers from the surrounding anguish and anger.
“But for the Japanese people, who will have a much more direct experience and feel more viscerally the empty stadiums and the strange contrast between this spectacle and their own continued struggles with controlling the pandemic, it may not have the same impact,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It’s an Olympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying — in theory, at least — to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent.
And running like an electric current through it all: the inescapable knowledge of the suffering and sense of displacement that COVID-19 has ushered in, both here and around the world.
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition.
On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here.
Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.
Since the pandemic canceled the originally scheduled version in 2020, the Japanese media have been obsessed with the Games. Will they really happen? If so, what will they look like? And the endlessly fascinating — shocking, really, to many here — prospect of staging an Olympics during what can seem like a slow-motion national disaster has permeated the society nearly as thoroughly as the virus.
“The mindset that the Olympics can be pushed through by force and that everyone should obey the order has invited this mess,” the Asahi newspaper said in a recent editorial. IOC and Japanese officials “should learn that their absurdity has deepened the public distrust in the Olympics.”
Of course, it’s too early to predict what, exactly, will happen when these cross-currents converge during the Games, as about 15,000 athletes and, by some estimates, nearly 70,000 officials, media and other participants insert themselves into the flow of Tokyo life in sequestered and limited, yet ubiquitous, ways.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Will the normally hospitable Japanese people warm to the visitors or become increasingly infuriated as they watch fully vaccinated guests enjoy freedoms they haven’t experienced since early 2020? Will the Olympians and others play by the rules meant to protect the country they’re visiting? Will they bring in variants that will spread through Japan? Will the effort to vanquish the coronavirus be impeded?
One thing seems certain: These games will have far less of what the world has come to expect from the Olympics, with its attractive mixture of human competition at the highest level amid celebrations and cultural exchanges on the sidelines by fans, athletes and local people.
Usually, the Olympics are a vibrant time — a two-week party for a host city eager to show the world its charms. They teem with tourists and all the fun that an exotic locale and interesting visitors can bring. This go-round. though, will be strictly choreographed for TV, with the skeptical people of Japan largely isolated as yet another state of emergency places more constraints on their daily lives.
The story that foreign visitors focus on for these Games will also be very different from the reality on the nation’s streets.
Barring catastrophe, the IOC, local newspapers (many of which are also sponsors), Japanese TV, and rights holders like NBC will likely be unified in their message: Just getting through will be cast as a triumph.
Not many visiting journalists, however, will linger in ICUs or chase down interviews with angry residents who feel these Games were hoisted onto the nation so that the IOC could collect its billions in TV money.
Read:6 athletes to represent Bangladesh in Tokyo Olympics
More likely, there will be plenty of made-for-TV images of a tour-book version of Japan, one that mixes shots of ancient history, tradition and natural beauty with a high-tech, futuristic sensibility: Think of a sleek, silver bullet train, for instance, streaking past a snow-capped Mount Fuji. A reality, in other words, riddled with easy-to-digest cliches and predictable establishing shots.
As Tokyo grapples in coming weeks with the intrinsic oddness of these pandemic Olympics, the disconnect between sports and sickness, rhetoric and reality, visitor and local will be hard to miss for many here.
Just how a reluctant Japan will weather a high-risk experiment that might come to define the coronavirus pandemic in future years, however, must wait until the visitors pack up and go home. Only then will the true price that the host nation must pay for these Surreal Games come into focus.
How will the virus emergency affect the Olympics?
A virus state of emergency began Monday in Japan’s capital, as the number of new cases is climbing fast and hospital beds are starting to fill just 11 days ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.
Here’s a look at the state of emergency and how it will affect the Olympics.
WHAT RESTRICTIONS ARE THERE?
The six-week emergency is Japan’s fourth since the pandemic began and will last until Aug. 22. The main target of the new state of emergency is alcohol served at bars and restaurants as authorities want people to stay home and watch the games on TV and not gather in public.
Like past emergencies, most of the measures are requests because the government lacks a legal basis to enforce hard lockdowns. Authorities have recently given themselves more power to issue binding orders for businesses to close or shorten hours in exchange for compensation. They can also now fine businesses that violate those orders.
Also read: Japan to declare virus emergency lasting through Olympics
The new state of emergency requests that restaurants, bars, karaoke parlors and other entertainment outlets either close or not serve alcohol. It asks liquor stores to suspend business with restaurants and bars that defy the request, but liquor stores say that would hurt their business ties.
Schools will stay open during this emergency, while theme parks, museums, theaters and most stores and restaurants are requested to close at 8 p.m.
Tokyo residents are asked to avoid nonessential outings, work from home and stick to mask-wearing and other safety measures. Measures for the general public are non-mandatory.
WHAT AREAS DOES IT COVER?
The latest state of emergency covers Tokyo’s nearly 14 million residents, while less-stringent measures focusing on shortened hours for restaurants and bars affect 31 million other people in nearby cities of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa that are home to some Olympic venues.
The measures also cover Osaka, which was hit hard by a virus surge in April, and the southern island of Okinawa.
HOW WILL THIS AFFECT THE OLYMPICS?
The state of emergency will cover the entire duration of the July 23-Aug. 8 Olympics and its main impact will be in barring fans from stadiums and arenas in the Tokyo area.
While the state of emergency mainly covers Tokyo, Olympic officials have decided to bar fans from events hosted in Tokyo’s three neighboring prefectures, while allowing limited fans at other outlying venues. Soccer events in Hokkaido and baseball and softball games in Fukushima, however, will also bar fans due to virus concerns.
Also read: Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
The games have already been postponed from 2020 by the pandemic, and fans from abroad were banned months ago.
With the new restrictions, the games will now be a largely TV-only event.
HOW BAD IS JAPAN’S VIRUS SITUATION?
Japan has weathered the pandemic better than many other countries, logging about bout 820,000 cases and 15,000 deaths.
But the situation has grown more serious in recent weeks, and Tokyo hit a two-month high of 950 new cases on Saturday. Experts have warned that the delta variant, which is thought to be more contagious, is spreading fast in offices and classrooms and without tough measures the numbers could skyrocket by August.
About 16.8% of the population has been fully vaccinated, a number that has picked up since May but is still far short of where officials hoped to be before the Olympics. Younger people are largely unvaccinated.
WILL THE PUBLIC COMPLY?
Experts worry whether the latest state of emergency requests will be followed when many people are already fatigued by the restraints and grown less cooperative.
Health Minister Norihisa Tamura has said that effectively preventing people from going out drinking amid festive mood of the Olympic will be a headache.
Also read: Tokyo Olympics to be held mostly without spectators due to pandemic
Young people are already gathering in streets and parks to drink after restaurants and bars close at 8 p.m. Tokyo metropolitan officials have started nighttime patrolling to chase them away.
Experts say Japanese roaming around during their summer vacations and the Olympics could be a greater risk than athletes and other participants whose activity will be closely monitored.
Japan to declare virus emergency lasting through Olympics
Japan is set to place Tokyo under a state of emergency that would last through the Olympics, fearing an ongoing COVID-19 surge will multiply during the Games.
At a meeting with experts Thursday morning, government officials proposed a plan to issue a state of emergency in Tokyo from next Monday to Aug. 22. The Summer Olympics, already delayed a year by the pandemic, begin July 23 and close Aug. 8.
The Games already will take place without foreign spectators, but the planned six-week state of emergency likely ends chances of a local audience. A decision about fans is expected later Thursday when local organizers meet with the International Olympic Committee and other representatives.
Read:As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
Tokyo is currently under less-stringent measures that focus on shortened hours for bars and restaurants but have proven less effective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is to formally announce the emergency plans later Thursday, hours after IOC President Thomas Bach was to land in Tokyo. Bach must self-isolate for three days in the IOC’s five-star hotel in the Japanese capital before heading to Hiroshima, where heavy rain is threatening flooding.
The upcoming emergency will be the fourth for Tokyo since the pandemic began and is a last-minute change of plan made late Wednesday after a meeting with experts who warned strongly against the government’s soft approach.
A main focus of the emergency is a request for bars, restaurants and karaoke parlors serving alcohol to close. A ban on serving alcohol is a key step to tone down Olympic-related festivities and keep people from drinking and partying. Tokyo residents are expected to face stay-home requests and watch the Games on TV from home.
“How to stop people enjoying the Olympics from going out for drinks is a main issue,” Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said.
Read: It’s Olympic month for Japan
Tokyo reported 920 new cases on Wednesday, up from 714 last week and its highest since 1,010 on May 13. The figure is in line with experts’ earlier estimate that daily cases in Tokyo could hit 1,000 before the Games and could spike into thousands in August.
Kazuhiro Tateta, a Toho University infectious diseases expert, noted an earlier state of emergency in the spring came too late to prevent hospitals in Osaka from overflowing with patients and said another delay should not be allowed.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, noted that two-thirds of Japan’s cases are from the Tokyo region and “our concern is the spread of the infections to neighboring areas.”
Experts also noted cases among younger, unvaccinated people are rising as Japan’s inoculation drive loses steam due to supply uncertainty.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Just 15% of Japanese are fully vaccinated, low compared to 47.4% in the United States and almost 50% in Britain. Nationwide, Japan has had about 810,000 infections and nearly 14,900 deaths.
“The infections are in their expansion phase and everyone in this country must firmly understand the seriousness of it,” Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, told reporters.
He urged authorities to quickly take tough measures ahead of the Olympics with summer vacations approaching. “The period from July to September is the most critical time for Japan’s COVID-19 measures,” Omi said.
Bangladesh hopeful of receiving 3.5 mln vaccine doses from COVAX this month: FM
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday said Bangladesh is hopeful of receiving more vaccine doses this month from Japan, the European Union (EU) and the USA under COVAX facility apart from a steady flow of that from China.
“We’re in a good position now. I should say we’ve made a line up. I think there’ll be no vaccine crisis, and the vaccination programme will continue uninterruptedly,” he told a small group of reporters at his residence.
Dr Momen said Bangladesh is expected to get around 2.5 million doses of vaccine from Japan while 1 million from the EU under the COVAX facility. “These’re likely to be AstraZeneca vaccine doses.”
The Foreign Minister said he talked to the Japanese Foreign Minister recently and Bangladesh mentioned about Japan’s vaccine supply to others.
Dr Momen said Japan will provide vaccine doses to Bangladesh, too but the exact quantity was not mentioned. But a big quantity of vaccine doses is expected to arrive this week or next week under the COVAX facility. “We expect it’ll be around 2.5 million doses.”
Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, abbreviated as COVAX, is a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines directed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
The Foreign Minister said Bangladesh recently got 2.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine doses from the USA under the COVAX facility. “US informed us that there’ll be more.”
He said the government has planned to bring vaccine doses from Sinopharm over the next three months as per the plan, and the first consignment of 2 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine has already arrived.
Read:Chinese firms working with Bangladeshi partners for vaccine co-production
As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
The pressure of hosting an Olympics during a still-active pandemic is beginning to show in Japan.
The games begin July 23, with organizers determined they will go on, even with a reduced number of spectators or possibly none at all. While Japan has made remarkable progress to vaccinate its population against COVID-19, the drive is losing steam because of supply shortages.
With tens of thousands of visitors coming to a country that is only 13.8% fully vaccinated, gaps in border controls have emerged, highlighted by the discovery of infections among the newly arrived team from Uganda, with positive tests for the highly contagious delta variant.
As cases grow in Tokyo, so have fears that the games will spread the virus.
Read: Richardson will miss Olympic 100 after marijuana test
“We must stay on high alert,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on July 1. Noting the rising caseloads, he said “having no spectators is a possibility.”
Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo organizing committee, agreed.
“It’s not that we are determined to have spectators regardless of the situation,” Hashimoto said Friday.
Organizers, the International Olympic Committee and others are expected to meet this week to announce new restrictions because of the fast-changing coronavirus situation.
Amid the criticism, Suga went to Tokyo’s Haneda international airport June 28 to inspect virus testing for arrivals. He vowed to ensure appropriate border controls as a growing number of Olympic and Paralympic athletes, officials and media begin entering Japan for the games.
On Monday, Tokyo confirmed 342 new cases, the 16th straight day of an increase. On Saturday, the capital reported 716 cases, highest in five weeks.
At a meeting of government advisers, experts warned of the possibility of infections exploding during the games, projecting daily caseloads exceeding 1,000. They said that would severely strain health care systems. In a worst-case scenario, there could be thousands of infections a day, causing hospitals to overflow, they said.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and the head of a government COVID-19 advisory board, urged tighter border controls to detect and isolate infected arrivals at airports to prevent infections from spreading from Tokyo to the suburbs.
In a case that has shocked many in Japan, a member of the Ugandan team tested positive upon arrival June 19 at Narita International Airport and was quarantined there. The rest of the nine-member team was allowed to travel more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) on a chartered bus to their pre-Olympics camp in the western prefecture of Osaka.
Days later, a second member of the team from East Africa tested positive for the virus, forcing seven town officials and drivers who had close contact with them to self-isolate. The team itself is isolating at a hotel. Health officials said both infected Ugandans had the delta variant.
On Saturday, an athlete from Serbia also tested positive, causing the cancelation of his team’s training in the central city of Nanto. The government also has acknowledged that four other people arriving for the Olympics tested positive after entering the country earlier this year.
Experts say the cases show that Japan’s border health controls can be easily breached.
“There will be more people coming in. … We should use this as a lesson so that similar problems won’t be repeated elsewhere in Japan,” Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura told a recent regional governors’ meeting where leaders adopted an urgent request for tighter border controls.
Read:It’s Olympic month for Japan
Under revised guidelines on health measures sent to 530 municipalities hosting Olympic training, airport officials will isolate an entire group if any member tests positive, and they will stay at designated facilities until the athletes’ village opens July 12. Hosting towns can request guests to stop training and isolate themselves until they clear contact tracing and virus tests.
Dozens of municipalities in Japan have canceled their hosting arrangements because of virus worries, and many of them decided to use those facilities as vaccination sites.
In Tokyo, infections are spreading among the young and middle-aged who are largely unvaccinated. The more serious cases requiring hospitalization are gradually replacing the elderly, 26% of whom are now fully vaccinated, according to experts.
Japan’s fully vaccinated rate of 13.8% is slightly above the world average of 11.3% but low compared with 47.4% in the United States and 49.5% in the U.K., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Our World in Data.
Adding to the worries is uncertainty about Japan’s vaccination campaign.
Workplace inoculations began in mid-June, with thousands of companies applying to vaccinate employees. But the government then indefinitely halted taking new applications for workplace and large-scale vaccination sites due to tight vaccine supplies.
“The progress exceeded our expectations,” said vaccinations minister Taro Kono, noting that daily shots have likely reached 1.2 million or more. He said Japan will receive only one-third of the Pfizer-BioNTechPfizer vaccine supply it had hoped to receive by late July.
“Confusion is spreading across Japan,” because of this slowdown, said Kamon Iizumi, the Tokushima governor who also heads the National Governors’ Association.
A vaccination center in Kagawa had to suspend shots for 30,000 people, and plans were put on hold for 6,500 companies in Gifu, in central Japan. Other areas including Osaka, Kobe and parts of Tokyo also were forced to suspend planned vaccinations from this week.
“What a disappintment,” said Yukio Takano, head of Tokyo’s Toshima district. “We have worked so hard to accelerate the rollouts and now we have to put on the brakes. ... What was the rush for?”
Japan began vaccinating medical workers in mid-February and the elderly in mid-April. Despite initial delays due to bungled reservations and shortages, the pace picked up in mid-May when vaccine imports stabilized and staff was secured to meet a primary target of fully vaccinating all 36 million elderly by the end of July.
Suga set up military-run mass vaccination centers in late May and added workplace and college campus venues to accelerate the progress.
On June 21, Japan eased its third state of emergency to less-stringent measures that focused on shorter operating hours at bars and restaurants in Tokyo and other metro areas until July 11.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Experts suggest, however, that a resurgence might require another emergency declaration during the Olympics. If so, organizers may have to reconsider their current limit of 10,000 people or 50% capacity at venues to perhaps barring all spectators.
Kengo Sakurada, president of Sompo Holdings and the head of an influential business lobby, said on June 30 that the current vaccination rate is not enough to hold a safe Olympics.
He said he supports having no spectators for events because the damage from a worse outbreak would be far greater.
“I would take the safer option,” he said.
Japan searches for 24 unaccounted for in mudslide; 4 dead
Rescue workers dug through sludge and debris Monday looking for more than 20 people who may be trapped after a torrent of mud, trees and rocks ripped with a roar through a Japanese seaside resort town, killing at least four people.
Atami Mayor Sakae Saito said 24 people were still unreachable Tuesday morning, after the city late Monday released the names of more than 60 registered residents who were unaccounted for and the majority of them responded for the contact request. Officials were double checking the number because many of the apartments and houses in Atami are second homes or vacation rentals.
Initially, 147 people were unreachable, but officials confirmed many safely evacuated or were simply not at home. In addition to the four people found dead, officials said 25 people have been rescued, including three who were injured.
The disaster is an added trial as authorities prepare for the Tokyo Olympics, due to start in less than three weeks, while Japan is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, with cases steadily climbing in the capital and experts suggesting a need for another state of emergency.
Read:Japan searches for dozens missing in resort town mudslide
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters that rescue workers are doing their utmost “to rescue those who may be buried under the mud and waiting for help as soon as possible.” Three coast guard ships, and six military drones were backing up hundreds of troops, firefighters and others toiling in the rain and fog.
The landslide occurred Saturday after days of heavy rain in Atami, which like many seaside Japanese towns is built into a steep hillside. It tore through the Izusan neighborhood, known for its hot springs, a shrine and shopping streets. The town has a registered population of 36,800 and is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu, who inspected the area Monday where the mudslide was believed to have started, said rain soaked into the mountainside apparently weakening the ground under a massive pile of soil at a construction site that then slid down the slope.
The prefecture is investigating. Media reports said a planned housing development in the area was abandoned after its operator ran into financial problems.
Witnesses described a giant roar as a small stream turned into a torrent, and bystanders were heard gasping in horror on cellphone videos taken as it happened.
Read:2 dead, 20 missing after mudslide rips through Japan town
Naoto Date, an actor who was visiting Izusan, was awakened by sirens. His neighborhood is now awash in muddy water with rescuers wading through knee-deep sludge. Just blocks from his home, some houses have been completely washed away, with only their foundations still visible. Mangled traffic signs stick out from the mud. At the seafront, he saw cars floating along with debris from destroyed homes.
“I grew up here, and my classmates and friends live here. I’m so sad to see my neighborhood where I used to play with my friends is now destroyed,” Date told The Associated Press by videocall from his home in Atami.
While Date’s mother, who was staying next door, has moved to a hotel along with other evacuees, the actor said he was staying away from evacuation centers because he is concerned about the coronavirus.
The Izusan area is one of 660,000 locations in Japan identified as prone to mudslides by the government, but those designations are not widely publicized and public awareness is low. Early July, near the end of Japan’s rainy season, is often a time of deadly flooding and mudslides, and many experts say the rains are worsening due to climate change.
With other parts of the country expecting heavy downpours, authorities were urging people near hillsides in areas at risk to use caution. Public broadcaster NHK carried a program Monday about risk factors and warning signs that might precede a landslide.
Read:Companies give vaccines to workers, boosting Japan’s rollout
A year ago, flooding and mudslides triggered by heavy rain in Kumamoto and four other prefectures in the Kyushu region in southern Japan left nearly 80 people dead. In July 2018, hillsides in crowded residential areas in Hiroshima collapsed, leaving 20 dead. In 2017, mudslides and flooding in the Kyushu region killed 40.
Miyoko Okamoto, an employee at a care home for the elderly, said the mudslide came close to but narrowly missed her house. She and her son ran out of the house, while her husband, a community association leader, escorted neighbors to safer ground.
Okamoto said she hasn’t been back home since fleeing because she is helping residents at the care home. “We were lucky to have survived, and that’s most important,” she said.
But her neighbor is still looking for his wife. “They are good friends of ours,” she said, “and that pains my heart.”