Japan's cumulative total of coronavirus infections tops 90,000

Not surprising at all. Surges were expected and as well as a second wave in Autumn and Winter. All over the world, we are seeing surges of the virus so no reason not to see it here too

..... with 98% of them being mild cases most of which do not require hospitalization. Why is it we can now pack airplanes, restaurants and other place using Go To Travel, Go To Eat and so on but places like churches remain empty.

Some 437 newly reported cases brought the total number to 90,099

It took Japan 10 months to reach 90,000 cases. The west did it 2 months.

Let us look at the G-7 cases for comparison sake.

USA 7.7 million cases.

France 737,434 cases

UK 603,000 cases

Italy 354,950 cases

Germany 326,291 cases

Canada 181,864 cases

Japan 90,009

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Those are the facts.

Why is it we can now pack airplanes, restaurants and other place using Go To Travel, Go To Eat and so on but places like churches remain empty.

Because 99% of the population didn't go to church before the pandemic. No reason to start now.

Nihonview: Look at the percentages. Not much of a difference country to country. Except China of course. Actually, Italy has a higher death rate than the US.

Give it two weeks.

NihonviewToday  08:26 am JST

Japan 90,009

If Japan did a reasonable amount of testing that number would likely have at least doubled, perhaps tripled.

Sad truth is up to today no one in Japan can really get a grasp on what is what wrt the virus, sad but true!

@NihonviewToday  08:18 am JST

Some 437 newly reported cases brought the total number to 90,099

It took Japan 10 months to reach 90,000 cases. The west did it 2 months.

The west actually wanted genuine figures!

If Japan did a reasonable amount of testing that number would likely have at least doubled, perhaps tripled.

or more even. The testing here is a joke.

Sad truth is up to today no one in Japan can really get a grasp on what is what wrt the virus, sad but true!

exactly.

Some 437 newly reported cases brought the total number to 90,099

It took Japan 10 months to reach 90,000 cases. The west did it 2 months.

The west actually wanted genuine figures!

Hit the nail on the head!

For those in the TL;DR camp.... Japan's real numbers for confirmed cases are over 311,243 if they were to match Canada's testing ratios.

============

Why is it so hard for people to understand the ratios between testing and confirmed cases.

If you test very few based on your population, then your numbers will be skewed.

Japan's numbers are low because they have only tested 2,299,045 which for Japan's population of 126,366,347 makes it 18,193 tests per million. With 88,912 confirmed cases, the ratio of positive test results from all tested comes in at 3.87%.

Canada has tested 8,047,974 and has a population of 37,834,630 which makes it 212,714 tests per million. With 181,864 confirmed cases, the ratio of positive test results from all tested comes in at 2.26%.

Canada is a HUGE country with lots of space so when you do the numbers, based on simply logic and no emotional factor. One can only look at those numbers and think, either Japan has been really lucky or you just don't know the real numbers due to the lack of testing.

The population around Tokyo Bay from Kanagawa, Tokyo, Saitama and Chiba is 36,603,970 (nearly that of Canada) in very compact area of 13,565.26 sq km nearly the same area as Metro Vancouver and the adjacent Fraser Valley Region District that sit on 16,217.96 sq km with a population of 2,759,365. What all this means is when you 'crunch' the numbers, based on the ratios currently being returned in Japan and matching it to say Canada's totals, Japan should be around 311,243 confirmed cases if they had just tested as many as Canada has. Now if you then try and match the actual ratio that Canada has... well you get the picture considering people in Japan are packed in like sardines.

Before anyone goes and claims that the number of deaths would be much higher in Japan if that were the case in Japan, it's not so for many reasons, health care standards in Japan are higher than the USA. Also, seniors care homes are much better run in Japan then in Canada or the USA. Japanese are also much healthier but they still can catch this virus and not show symptoms and then keep spreading it. The real question is why does the Japanese government spend so much time making excuses for not testing? You'd almost think they have something to hide. Kind of like how real China's numbers are for this virus.

KnowBetter

excellent post!

Before anyone goes and claims that the number of deaths would be much higher in Japan if that were the case in Japan, it's not so for many reasons, health care standards in Japan are higher than the USA. Also, seniors care homes are much better run in Japan then in Canada or the USA. Japanese are also much healthier but they still can catch this virus and not show symptoms and then keep spreading it

Agree with you here. Japan's retirement homes are really good and are 10xs better than in north america and europe where we really dropped the ball on senior care. we should learn from Japan when it comes to senior care.

Having said that, there are also other reasons why the death rate is so low.

First of all, its not that easy to get tested; the testing fee is prohibitively expensive for many. Another factor is stigma. No one wants to be shunned by their neighbors and community for having the virus. Another factor is there are certain conditions one must meet to be eligible for a test. And finally, many clinics and hospitals simply do not provide covid tests. For these reasons above people are not getting tested enough.

Now, since we don't know who's got the virus, it would be pretty absurd to be able to say we have a grasp on the numbers regarding the death rate. We don't. If someone has not been diagnosed with the virus when they were alive, there is simply no way of knowing if they died from it without an autopsy for covid- which they don't do here.

And because of that, we not only have no idea who died directly from the virus, we also have no clue as to the number of people who contracted covid and then died from a preexisting condition that was exacerbated by contracting covid.

And more than 99.5% make a full recovery.

You will find in countries where people took it more seriously and listened to what was being advised that Covid didn't really explode, as in countries where people were up in arms about masking, distancing ect.

this Whole Total in Japan is almost the same as the DAILY total in Spain or UK with half the population.

the virus is mostly harmless to most infected. Old and sick people very dangerous.

i had influenza in January. 5 days rest. The problem with SARS-CoV-2 is it is new and research is ongoing. Don’t expect a safe vaccine anytime soon.

the most important aspect of these statistics is not the infection rate. The more important statistic is the death rate. this should be analyzed on the basis of how well medical institutions are prepared, the quality of treatment and the access ordinary citizens have to treatment.

Give it two weeks.

Give it short term business visas, Olympic training visas and then...the main event...the Olympics.

GoodlucktoyouToday  11:52 am JST

Give it two weeks.

Give it short term business visas, Olympic training visas and then...the main event...the Olympics

I was being sarcastic, its always wait two weeks, wait until go-to, business tra

And more than 99.5% make a full recovery.

Shhhh, let's focus on the cases; we need to keep the people panicked.

Don’t expect a safe vaccine anytime soon.

Indeed, so this virus will be wreaking havoc on society until enough of us catch it. The relatively low cases does not reassure me one bit.

While I am extremely grateful life is pretty much as normal in Japan and the death toll has been low, testing has to be ramped up in the next month or two. As we move toward winter, hundreds of thousands of people are going to catch colds and flu and end up with Covid-like symptoms. The current level of testing is wholly inadequate. The government may have gotten away with it so far, but it's going to be a big problem very soon.

For those in the TL;DR camp.... Japan's real numbers for confirmed cases are over 311,243 if they were to match Canada's testing ratios.

No it would not. Your argument assumes that if you test the two population sets they should be exactly the same. It ignores other factors. Use of masks, etc.

Let us look at your argument with with another example. Say you have two men. One man is in a high risk group for a disease. He takes the test for the disease and he tests positive .

Now look at another man, who is not in a high risk group. He does not take the test. Using your argument, he should test positive.

In other words, if Japan conducts the same amount tests as Canada, it should match Canada's rates? Regardless of everything else?

The government may have gotten away with it so far, but it's going to be a big problem very soon.

You and your friends have been writing the same thing for the last 10 months. Get some new materal.

How abt deaths caused by covid?How many procent from population?

Anyway, Japan's covid death is about 1627. It works about 13 death per 1m and Mortilaity rate of about 1.7%

Most people understand that with such minimal testing the official Japanese numbers are significantly understated.

Along the same lines, at a WHO session on October 5th (that got little coverage from major news agencies), the WHO's Head of Emergencies announced that they now believe roughly 10% of the world has been infected with Sars-Cov-2. This is their new “best estimate” and it is based on the average results of all large studies done around the world. This huge increase over 'officially' recognized cases (35 million vs 780 million) of course means that the infection fatality rate moves in the opposite direction by the same magnitude.

Here is another thing to consider. In Canada most of the bars/restaurants are empty and likely closing again soon. Here in Tokyo they are packed. So why aren’t numbers surging in Tokyo?

For posters who don't know, children with cold symptoms like coughs, wheeziness, runny noses etc. normally continue going to school in Japan. Adults continue going to work, mostly via public transport.

Without more testing, is anyone with cold symptoms going to have to self-isolate for two weeks? What about their family members? People suspected of Covid 19 are not supposed to visit regular medical clinics even. They are told to ring a number and go to a special center, or otherwise just stay at home and avoid people. What's going to happen in December when there will be thousands of people will colds, i.e., with the same symptoms as Covid-19. The obvious thing to do would be to test them and let the negative ones get on with their lives.

I don't quite get what you all want to achieve by testing more. So then we have 10x the cases per day, what difference does it make?

We cannot contain it anymore. The virus is out there, it would only make sense to test the whole population at the exact same time and immediately quarantine all infected, which is impossible, to contain the virus. We have crossed the point of return.

It seems to work fine in Japan, hospitals are not overrun. If you see a tendency like that, then we can talk about countermeasures, but closing the economy again only as a preventative action does not safe but destroys lifes.

I’ve been going to bars/restaurants in Marunouchi, Yurakucho/Ginza/Shimbashi. Yes, they are packed. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

that much I know.

There seems to be an assumption in the comments section that the figures stated in the article are not accurate. Let me posit that if in Japan there were as many infected per million as in many Western nations, the hospitals would be at max capacity with pneumonia-like illnesses, and the morgues would be overflowing. Since that is clearly not happening, it lends credence to the reliability of the figures stated in the article.

If the statistics in the article are reasonably accurate, then I for one say, Well done Japan!

Your figures of 90,000 infected and 1,643 dead compare remarkably well with what is going on here in the States, where we have more than twice as many dead as Japan has infected. If we adjust for the difference in populations, Japan would have 4,212 deaths, compared to our 214,000+.

It is almost as if Trump is trying to destroy America, not make it great, at all.

Nihonview, you would do well to refer to sources that at least have accurate data. Worldometers is not such a site and many of the numbers there are quite different from the official numbers provided by the different countries. There are better sources like Our World in Data where you will actually find the official numbers but they are not presented in tables.

It's not helping that you keep listing numbers without any context either. There are so many factors in play that make it impossible to really compare Japan to any other country you listed since both testing and tracing policy differ. It is also not helping that Japan's level of testing is on the level of Zambia (0.14/1000 people per day vs Japan's 0.15/1000). Japan is even behind such "wealthy" countries like Rwanda (0.18) or Namibia (0.42).

Of the countries you listed, most let anyone get tested. Japan on the other hand focuses on those that show symptoms. Many of the asymptomatic cases that get tested in other countries and test positive never would get tested in Japan. Most also trace and test in every case that comes up. Only the US and the UK have limited tracing like Japan (although the degree may differ). In Tokyo for example around 50% of the cases have been of an unknown route of infection most of the time.

When other places test 6.9 times (Germany for instance) or more than you do, it's likely that they will find more cases (especially since they trace in every case and even asymptomatic people will get tested). When the numbers of other places are high (people with symptoms + asymptomatic people) while your's are low (mostly symptomatic people), then how do you compare that? I've not had the time to analyze newer numbers (unfortunately most countries release their numbers differently, so it's a pain to compile) but at least from mid August to mid September Japan did far less testing than Germany for instance, had less cases, but more people died on a weekly basis. Just having less cases is not a good way to compare places. The lack of testing early on (granted it is not that much better now) also means that the number of death may be skewed. The Nikkei (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Tokyo-s-excess-deaths-far-higher-than-COVID-19-count-data-shows) had a report in May on an excess of people that died in Tokyo from flu-like ilnesses of about 50-60 per week for 5 weeks starting from mid February. That's as far as the data reached at that time. In that time frame flu cases were even down by over 60% in Japan (44,737 vs 129,989 in the same week the year before) and had already been falling before for quite some time. So there you have a few hundred more in Tokyo that might have died in relation to COVID-19. But a lack of testing won't tell us if it is a coincidence or not. So if someone were to ask me if Japan is doing just fine or actually worse than it appears, I'd have to say that I don't know. I'll refrain from making any assessment in either direction when it comes to Japan. Japan is doing things her own way and that is fine. But that also means that it's not exactly possible to compare her number to those of other countries. There are quite a few other countries as well that do their own thing (like Russia for instance) and I'd refrain from comparing those to other countries also, so it is not just Japan.

90,099 over the last eight months. How many of those are still recovering? How many have fully recovered and returned to society? Maybe 70,000 or 80,000? That would be a good news story. After endless case counts, I'd like to see more positive news stories focused on the recovery rate or the minuscule fatality rate. Wouldn't the other readers on this website?

@1glenn; if you put it into percentages, you may think differently. You can’t compare the two countries based on total numbers. Do the math. Look at percentages. I believe Italy has a higher death rate than the states. Japan about 4% and States about 6/7%.