Japan lights up warning for omicron when it seems to have controlled pandemic

November 29, 2021

Robert

It was good while it lasted. After months of a state of emergency, Japan experienced days of optimism between October and November, with more than 75% of the population fully immunized against Covid-19 and a small rate of new cases not seen since the first months of the pandemic —until the detection of the omicron variant, sequenced last week by scientists in South Africa.

So far, no case with the new strain of virus has been confirmed in the archipelago. The Japanese government, however, has already lit an alert for the omicron, ordering on Monday (29) the closing of the borders, categorizing the mutation as “worrying” — the highest of the three alert levels of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of Japan — and promising “special answers.”

“The key to managing crises is preparing for the worst,” said Matsuno Hirokazu, the government’s chief secretary last Friday (26), in reporting the imposition of a ten-day quarantine for passengers arriving from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe; on Sunday (28), Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia were also included in the list.

Since the end of the state of emergency on September 30, Japan has been on a surprising tide of good indicators in the pandemic: it was the last country in the G7 (the group of the main economies in the world) to start the vaccination campaign, but it accelerated the pace of immunization and now tops the list of seven.

In addition, the country did not lockdown and registered record infections during the Tokyo Olympics, but saw the curve drop dramatically over September and October, reaching only 50 cases on November 22 — the lowest number in 2021, by the first time such a low level since June 2020.

It was in this climate of “the worst is over” that the country once again allowed concerts, games and parties for larger audiences, as long as the 50% occupancy limit was respected. Taking advantage of the good moment, the Brazilian consulate in the city of Hamamatsu, in Shizuoka province, held cultural events.

“Fortunately, life is slowly returning to normal – continuing, of course, with precautions, such as wearing a mask, which, by the way, was always normal here, even before the pandemic”, says consul Aldemo Garcia.

Recently, the Japanese government has indicated that, as of January, it intends to resume the “Go To Travel” campaign, an incentive program for domestic tourism. It had also been considering the possibility of reopening borders, closed to international tourists since April 2020.

However, everything can change with the appearance of omicron and other possible variants. “We’re in a legal situation now, but we could see worse waves in the future depending on our responses to the crisis,” said Kento Iwata, director of Kobe University’s division of infectious diseases.

Before, according to the expert, it was not possible to think about coexisting with the virus in the long term in the country. Now, vaccines and the development of drugs that can help prevent serious conditions, little by little, can incorporate Covid into everyday life, just like what happens with influenza, says Iwata.

Learning to live with the coronavirus was an approach Japan took a long time ago — at the end of the first state of emergency in May 2020, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe highlighted the importance of establishing “a new way of life” that consider the presence of the virus in everyday life.

“Although it is difficult to predict what might happen with the emergence of new variants, we can say that in Japan it is possible to coexist with the virus due to the high rate of vaccination and the implementation of basic guidelines against infectious diseases”, evaluates Haruka Sakamoto, researcher at the Department of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo.

For her, this coexistence model should be based on avoiding what has been called 3C: closed spaces (closed places), crowded places and close-contact settings (close contacts).

Where the virus has returned to causing strong waves, adds Sakamoto, it is noted that either vaccination is still low — 75% is a minimum percentage necessary — or people have relaxed control measures after being immunized, for example, not using masks.

According to the researcher, this is not the time to let down your guard. “If we continue with the prevention measures, we may even have infections, but not so many that we need to go through another state of emergency”, he says. As of November 29, Japan has recorded 1.72 million cases and 18,269 deaths from Covid.