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Tokyo Issues Alert After New Daily COVID-19 Cases Rise to 34
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government issued an alert on Tuesday after Tokyo recorded 34 new infections of the new coronavirus on the same day. Officials stated that the rise in new COVID-19 cases is largely due to nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections and nightlife activities in Shinjuku.
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike urged caution in light of Tokyo's "precarious situation." Koike added that she will consider reissuing business shutdown requests if the spread of COVID-19 worsens.
The number of daily infections in Tokyo exceeded 200 on April 17 and then experienced a general decline. The number of new cases in Tokyo fell to a low of two on May 23, but that has increased to more than 10 new daily cases for eight of the past 10 days.
Tuesday marked the first day since May 14 with more than 30 new COVID-19 cases in Tokyo. The Tokyo government had given seven criteria for monitoring the COVID-19 situation such as the number of new daily infections not surpassing an average of 20 in the past week. However, Tokyo has breached some of the criteria thresholds since May 29.
Tokyo lit up its iconic Rainbow Bridge (pictured right in REUTERS photograph) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in red to highlight the alert status.
The Tokyo government moved to the second phase of its multi-phase recovery road map for COVID-19 on Monday. While the Tokyo government is planning to move to each new step every two weeks, it stated that it may move to the third phase early if new infection cases remained low.
Japan lifted the state of emergency in the five remaining prefectures — Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, Kanagawa, and Hokkaido — on May 25, six days earlier than the planned May 31 date.
Source: The Japan Times (Ryusei Takahashi)
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