Covid closing in
The coronavirus is closing in. In the autumn, it looked like Japan had successfully squashed the contagion. Then the omicron variant emerged in South Africa. The first omicron case was reported in Japan in early January 2022. By the end of the month the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus had gone from fewer than 1,000 nationwide to nearly 700,000 - most of them victims of the omicron variant. It is our 6th surge in Japan. What it means for my life is that for the first time the virus is affecting people that I know. Japanese students and teachers at my work places were absent either because they were sick with Covid-19, or they were isolating because they were infected, or they were isolating because they were close contacts with a confirmed infection, or they were isolating because they were a family member of someone who was either infected or a confirmed close contact, requiring ten days of quarantine.
Japan avoided school closures, and except for travel - the Olympics and everything else - life has gone on relatively normally, albeit with a lot more hygiene than normal and with a lot more advice about how to conduct ourselves. But now that infection numbers are so high, the absenteeism caused by a combination of hospitalizations (not many) and quarantine is starting to take a noticeably economic toll. Businesses are having episodes of staff shortages. Hospitals are experiencing nursing shortages. Many pre-schools and day care centers have to temporarily suspend operations. Some teachers are absent from their schools for the first time in all of this. Factories have high absenteeism and lower production, etc.
I have been tested five times for the coronavirus. In July 2020 and May 2021, when I was admitted to hospital for procedures. Then suddenly in January 2022 it became necessary to get tested - on Thursday 13th, then again on Sunday 16th, and finally once more on Tuesday 18th. All negative, thankfully. I blame people I associate with at work who came to work with cold symptoms which later turned out to be full-blown Covid!
The rollout of booster shots has been just as slow as the rollout of the original vaccination program in the winter/spring of 2021, meaning that the Japanese are making the same mistakes they made one year ago. They didn’t learn anything from their vaccine rollout last year. It’s maddening! I expect that once kinks in the system are worked out, though - the supply chain and the reservation system - booster shots will take off like a rocket in March, just like how the initial vaccination program took off in the late spring and summer of 2021.