Tokyo Virus Cases Hit Record for a Second Consecutive Day

(Bloomberg) --

Tokyo saw a second straight day of record coronavirus cases Friday, with 293 cases reported amid growing concern about the ability of authorities to suppress the outbreak. The city had 286 cases Thursday.

While Hong Kong and Australia have tightened restrictions on people’s activities as virus cases rebounded, Japanese officials have said similar measures are not needed now. Even as nationwide cases approach peak levels, they continue to stress the differences between the current surge and the one in April when the country declared a state of emergency.

“There is a debate right now about whether to declare another state of emergency,” Shigeru Omi, the head of a panel of experts advising the government, acknowledged at a briefing on Thursday evening. “At the moment we are not at that point as cases are not increasing explosively. But unfortunately we also do not expect a sudden decrease in cases.”

Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s minister in charge of the virus, stressed at the briefing that serious cases -- those in an ICU or needing a ventilator -- weren’t rising, and that while hospitalizations in Tokyo had increased to 760, the city’s healthcare system wasn’t under pressure.

The city had seven serious cases as of Thursday, compared to 105 at the peak in April, and saw just one death in the past three weeks. It has more than 2,800 beds set aside for Covid-19 patients.

Market Pressure

Tokyo’s stock market retreated after Governor Yuriko Koike warned this morning the virus tally would be similar to Thursday’s. The city has been increasing its testing, with more than 4,000 tests conducted on both Thursday and Friday, she said, more than 10 times the average in April. Koike is set to speak at a regularly scheduled briefing at 3:30 p.m.

While the recent outbreak in Tokyo was initially focused on nighttime entertainment areas such as host or hostess clubs, cases have begun to expand to bars, restaurants and workplaces. Nishimura said that the authorities’ main approach would be to continue to ask establishments serving alcohol to follow government guidelines aimed at preventing infection, and encourage people not to patronize stores which flout the rules.

Other prefectures across the country have also been reporting infection surges since the lifting of the state of emergency in May. The spike in cases in Tokyo caused the national government to backtrack on a widely panned campaign aimed at promoting regional tourism and it excluded the capital from the program.

While the discount travel campaign is still set to begin next week for other regions, the government on Friday delayed applications for a similar campaign aimed at supporting restaurants.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.