Tokyo reports 149 new coronavirus cases; nationwide tally 507

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Wednesday reported 149 new cases of the coronavirus, down 21 from Tuesday. The number is the result of 913 tests conducted on Sept 6

Lets take a quick look at the numbers to see whether cases are reducing as our resident anti-testers

are saying yesterday was 170 cases out of 3098 tests, today is 149 out of 913 test.

My bad, it is even stated that it is down by 21 but what is not stated is that the test is unproportionally

down by 2185. So can we say with confidence that it is on a downward trend ? the choice is yours.

he Tokyo metropolitan government on Wednesday reported 149 new cases of the coronavirus, down 21 from Tuesday. The number is the result of 913 tests conducted on Sept 6.

That's more than 1 out of 10 people testing positive.

Anyway, less than a 1000 tests per day in the biggest Metropolis in the world is a joke

Anyway, less than a 1000 tests per day

and

re saying yesterday was 170 cases out of 3098 tests, today is 149 out of 913 test.

Your math and logic are both flaw.

If the number of tests are down, that means fewer people are meeting the guidelines for the test. Which means fewer people have been exposed to virus or not showing any symptoms.

The goal is not conduct the greatest number of tests. ****The goal is to minimize the number of deaths.

This virus seems to be getting less threatening by the day. Yet the usual suspects keep propagating fear. Why?

Orac

If the number of tests are down, that means fewer people are meeting the guidelines for the test. Which means fewer people have been exposed to virus or not showing any symptoms.

And what was the guideline again to have a test ?.

I can't smell anything even coffee and my sense of taste is gone but since I don't

have fever I don't qualify for testing because that is not in the guideline, you see how

flawed the guideline can be. Well, I don't expect you to.

Positivity rate of 16.3%. Not very good.

Only 913 tests conducted. Again, not very good.

More testing will help find those who are spreading COVID unknowingly. Finding those silent spreaders will make the positivity rate increase, but over the long run the numbers should come down. A comprehensive testing intitative is long overdue.

But will this happen in Japan? Not likely. And this is, I know I sound like a broken record...not very good

I am getting tired of reading about the lack amount of tests, that always people are mentioned here.

I think everyone knows already that Japan tests people only with symptoms.

And look at other countries. (Dr. Lucifer, you mentioned in another post England, Russia, Germany.  Let me also add USA and Spain.)

These countries conduct much more tests than Japan. Much more tests! I agree with that.

But did they contain the Virus?

Absolutely not! Look at their death rates!

I don’t know if people here also read international news, but currently many countries in the world are considering (and decided already) to decrease the tests.

They also want and some already currently do "test only people who shows symptoms or are related to a cluster".

And Guys, is it really worth to discuss 149 or 1400 or 14000 cases among a population of 14.000.000?

We should better think and be concerned about the coming influenza season, when 100thousands people or more rushing to the hospitals.

Anyway, less than a 1000 tests per day

and

re saying yesterday was 170 cases out of 3098 tests, today is 149 out of 913 test.

Your math and logic are both flaw.

I NEVER said anything about 170 out of 3098 tests You just made that up

If the number of tests are down, that means fewer people are meeting the guidelines for the test. Which means fewer people have been exposed to virus or not showing any symptoms.

Your reasoning is flawed. The fact is A HIGHER PERCENTAGE of tested people are being found positive indicating that the number is increasing.

The goal is not conduct the greatest number of tests.

REally?? Because the majority of health experts would disagree with you. But don't worry. Donald Trump agrees with you.

*****The goal is to minimize the number of deaths.*

You do that by testing to know who is infected so that you can take necessary measures to make sure they don't infect others and kill them.

If the tests are only being conducted on people with suspected symptoms, and the number of people with suspected symptoms is declining, that might suggest that COVID-19 is becoming less potent even if it is still highly contagious. Could it be that herd immunity is developing, or is the virus mutating itself out of puff?

The falling number of tests might - just might - indicate that things are on the mend and we should start really getting things back into gear while protecting the people who are actually vulnerable without punishing those who aren't.

What a splendid pool of world leading virologists here...lol

If I also may bring me in, testing everyone or only those few with almost clear COVID symptoms is the strategy that has to be applied for best data and results. In my opinion those daily numbers with only few testing wise into one of the right directions, so please stop claiming around all day, ok?

Sven AsaiToday  05:11 pm JST

What a splendid pool of world leading virologists here...lol

I take it you're one of them?

Took a quick look at the graph of those who tested positive in tokyo, it's downward since 2nd week of August.

If you're judging a trend based on data from 1 or 2 days it doesn't matter if you conclude it's up or down, both are flawed

If I also may bring me in, testing everyone or only those few with almost clear COVID symptoms is the strategy that has to be applied for best data and results. In my opinion those daily numbers with only few testing wise into one of the right directions, so please stop claiming around all day, ok?

Results speak for themselves.

Low number of deaths and serious cases.

People are travelling and working.

Kids going to school.

Another key factor to consider is people in serious condition along with deaths. And the number of people who recover. Anyway, everyone has to make their own risk assessment based on the data being made available. Good luck to all.

What a splendid pool of world leading virologists here...lol

You new here?

You should have been here the time of the cruise ship hahaha

According to worldometer, closed cases in Japan have a death rate of 2%. If you consider the number of asymptomatic people that haven't been tested, the death rate in Japan is probably around 0.2%.

Was all the economic pain worth it for a virus with a death rate of 0.2%?

Monty

And look at other countries. (Dr. Lucifer, you mentioned in another post England, Russia, Germany. Let me also add USA and Spain.)

These countries conduct much more tests than Japan. Much more tests! I agree with that.

But did they contain the Virus?

Absolutely not! Look at their death rates!

They have not contained the virus but apart of the U.S and Russia the number of positive cases

has reduced and they have a good grasp of the spread of the virus and all except the two I mentioned

they go days without reporting any fatalities. If maintain a constant testing regime and say you are carrying

out 50,000 tests a day and maintain that number of testing over a period of time and the numbers of positives

over that period reduces then you can say with utter certainty that it is a downward trend. It can't be said wwith certainty that the trend is downward when the number of tests doesn't follow any pattern and fluctuates .

yesterday was 3000 test today 900 test, tomorrow 2000 tests is too fluctuating to draw any useful conclusion from.

@drlucifer

Havent you notice many of the other mass testing hysterics have stopped posting.

Hospitals havent be overrun deaths are very low

Except for wearing masks life is normal.

Time to repair the Tokyo economy as numbers are stabilizing. Please support local businesses.

Havent you notice many of the other mass testing hysterics have stopped posting.

Hospitals havent be overrun deaths are very low

I see so the goal has been to prevent hospitals rather than prevent the spread of the

virus. Saving the ship rather than the passengers.

Well the goal can easily be achieved by making conditions difficult, abstract and open to

interpretation.

Well for your information deaths are low in most countries of the world and not only Japan.

Numbers falling. I wonder if other prefectures will join Shimane and Tottori with no active cases. Ehime has 1 active case for example.

Yes the usual scaremongers have been quite for the last few days . Also I have not seen the big explosion of infected cases after obon that is every one of them said was going to happen, if anything they have have come down ( not a great lot but down yes)

Well for your information deaths are low in most countries of the world and not only Japan.

Why were you saying that as if it's a bad thing?

You sound sad

My bad, it is even stated that it is down by 21 but what is not stated is that the test is unproportionally

down by 2185. So can we say with confidence that it is on a downward trend ? the choice is yours.

These figures are for Saturday and Sunday testing, which would generally represent only the most serious cases.

To look at trends, running 7-day averages give a more informative picture.

The old or immuno-compromised are in danger of corona linked complications but the rest of us?

It doesn’t seem to be the case does it now.

I only know a few people to have caught it and all have recovered.

The mass deaths just haven’t happened.,,

Could the moderators clarify if the reported deaths are for Tokyo or nationwide?

Moderator: Nationwide.

The number of infected people with severe symptoms is 24, up three from Tuesday, health officials said.

24 ICUs in Tokyo only. That's great news. Understanding also that these are the cases that are in intensive care. And they are the people who will suffer most from the coronavirus.

But for a metropolis of 14M people. That figure is insignificant.

I think I know on this comment page who voted me up and who voted me down. Doom and gloom merchants that do not believe the information given to them and make up anything that they want to believe

Davidvancleef

These figures are for Saturday and Sunday testing, which would generally represent only the most serious cases.

So 913 cases or the large majority are serious cases, why is that ?

The number of infected people with severe symptoms is 24, up three from Tuesday, health officials said.

It is clearly written that the number of serious cases increased by only 3 people.

Seems to me like you jumped into this thread without even reading the short article.

Was all the economic pain worth it for a virus with a death rate of 0.2%?

If they just let it spread uncontrolled and infect 60 percent of the population, that 0.2% death rate would translate into about 150,000 deaths instead of 1300.

I’d say it was worth it, especially given the fact that the economic pain here has been way less severe than other countries.

Masks off time again...

First of all, thank you JT for providing more information than just the number of new cases.

Falling case numbers accompanied by less testing is not exactly a reason to rejoice, nor are rising numbers a reason to panic if more tests are being conducted. Unfortunately there was little testing once again. Since the number of tests fluctuates so much, it is hard to get a clear picture if the situation is actually improving or worsening.

We’re past the point where we could get a clear picture on how Japan has fared so far especially compared to other countries, since only a satisfactory and contant level of testing makes that possible.

In fact the testing or the lack thereof leads to more questions than it answers. When we look for instance at what The Nikkei reported (May 25, 2020 - Tokyo's excess deaths far higher than COVID-19 count, data shows)

The Japanese capital may have suffered more than 200 excess fatalities from pneumonia and other causes early in the outbreak, possibly dwarfing the period's official coronavirus death count of 16.

Even more deaths could have been undercounted in April, whose numbers will not come out until next month.

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases tracks fatalities from flu-like illnesses by collecting data from public health departments around the country. The tallies include those who died from pneumonia.

Excess fatalities are calculated by comparing these figures against baselines derived from past data.

The newest numbers show 50 to 60 excess deaths a week for the five weeks starting Feb. 17, adding up to hundreds more fatalities than usual.

If we are to believe that report, an additional 250 to 300 people died from flu-like illnesses including pneumonia in Tokyo alone during those 5 weeks. The cause for this could be a higher amount of influenza cases but such a thing didn't happen as The Japan Times reported (Feb 21, 2020 - COVID-19 outbreak seen bringing quick end to flu season in Japan)

The flu season appears to be waning significantly faster than last year thanks to public fear of the deadly new coronavirus, government data shows.

In the week ended Feb. 9, reported influenza cases plunged by over 60 percent to 44,737, compared with 129,989 the same week a year ago, according data from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

That means flu cases have fallen for six consecutive weeks since the new year began, the data show.

So the amount of flu cases has continuously fallen in the time leading up to the excess deaths. In fact there have been less influenza cases compared to the last 5 years a research letter shows (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764657). Of course we can’t say what exactly this means for Tokyo. However unlikely it is possible that other places had such a big drop in cases that even an increase in Tokyo meant a drop in overall cases. But it is just as likely that Tokyo also saw a drop and the excess is even higher.

A lack of testing unfortunately means that we’ll likely never know why there was an excess. This does not mean that all those deaths are down to COVID-19, but it is impossible to say if and to what extent the virus had a hand in play here. It’s also possible that this is all just a coincidence.

Even comparing the number of deaths in a certain time frame of this year with the same time frame the years before will not tell us anything and will not even serve as a good indicator. The Japan Times reported that in April Tokyo saw an excess of 1000 deaths (Jun 11, 2020 - Tokyo deaths up by 1,000 in April from monthly average as virus peaked).

Tokyo saw more deaths than usual in April, the month when coronavirus cases in the city peaked.

The hardest-hit city in the country, Tokyo saw 10,107 deaths from all causes in the month, according to data released Thursday by the Metropolitan Government. That’s almost 12 percent higher than the average of the previous four years for which data are available, and 7 percent higher than the same month in 2019.

The city officially reported just over 100 deaths from the coronavirus in April. The mortality data suggests there were around 1,000 more deaths in the month than average, though Tokyo has a growing population that increased by 0.6 percent, or 80,000 people, from last year to surpass 14 million for the first time. Deaths also increased in 2019 from the previous year by 6 percent.

Does that mean that there were actually 1000 more covid deaths in Tokyo? Maybe, maybe not. But it is not like there was just an excess. Reuters reported that the number of suicides actually fell in April by 20% (May 29, 2020 - Calm before the storm for Japan suicides as coronavirus ravages economy)

National suicides fell 20% year-on-year in April, the first month of the country’s soft lockdown, but experts said that was likely due to an internationally recognised phenomenon in which suicides decrease during crises, only to rise afterwards.

And it was not just the number of suicides that fell. There were also less people that died due to road accidents as Japan Today reported (May 16, has since expired - Road accidents in Japan fall to record low in April)

The number of deaths also decreased by 19.9 percent to 213, the lowest figure on record for April, while the number of injuries fell 37.7 percent to 24,587, the agency said.

It is impossible to say if Tokyo saw less suicides or road fatalities. Why did I cite those articles then even if the numbers? I wanted to show that other causes of death dropped in Japan overall and there has not been a sharp increase that could tell us where those extra 1000 deaths came from. Like those deaths related to flu-like illnesses it is not possible to say if COVID-19 is responsible for (part of) that excess. Only testing would have given a clearer picture. In fact the official numbers from Germany (from the Statistisches Bundesamt and the Robert Koch-Institut) and the UK(England and Wales to be more precise; data from the Office for National Statistics) show that just comparing the numbers of deaths will not tell you anything.

Germany registered its first corona death in March. Overall there were 583 deaths in connection with corona. Compared to the average of the four years before the number of deaths was lower by 2974. In April it was the opposite and there was an excess of 6977 deaths. Despite all the testing there were only 5705 corona deaths though. So there was an increase in deaths that likely has nothing to do with corona. In May the number of deaths was again lower than the average of the years before (367 less) while there were 2212 corona deaths.

In England and Wales there were an excess of deaths in the early weeks. For 6 weeks those numbers were higher than the corona deaths. Afterwards was a small period where there was an excess of deaths that exceeded the corona deaths during that time frame, followed by a few weeks where there were less deaths than the years before while there were still hundreds of corona deaths.

This illustrates the issue with limited testing. Even with the numbers we have we can only make assumptions. It does not help that Japan only does limited tracking either (according to Our World in Data; a platform that is also cited in academic scientific journals and uses official data) unlike other countries.

The number of new cases has dropped in the last few weeks in Japan, but so has the number of tests. At the same time the amount of deaths went up from week 33 to 35 (52, 82, 98). In comparison to this Germany has steadily increased its testing and conducted as many tests as 1101299 in week 35. That is 7.18 times the testing Japan did during the same time frame (153329). I’ve not checked the weeks before but in the weeks 33 to 35 Germany saw less deaths than Japan by a good margin (33: 17 less; 34: 44 less; 35: 72 less). 

I’m sure everyone also remembers the reports when people in their 20s and 30s contributed about 70% of the new cases in Tokyo. People aged 15 to 64 make up around 68% of Tokyo’s population. Before they shifted their focus on people working in certain industries (who are likely in their 20s and 30s) in June, they contributed to about 31-33% of the cases in March to May. While they conducted about 19k more tests in June than in May, the number of new cases in the higher age range dropped while those in the 20s and 30s increased. It is probably just a coincidence but it may also be down to their focus on a certain group of people. It is insofar interesting that in Germany, England and Wales, as well as France those aged 70+ contribute about 85% of the deaths. Hopefully it is not the case but the shift may explain why the number of deaths in Tokyo dropped from 105 in April and 185 in May suddenly to 20 in June and 7 in July.

As people have already assumed, the days with the least tests are Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday they conduct about 10% of the weekly tests, while on Sunday it’s around 3%. During the week the percentage per day is far closer but Monday seems to be the day with most tests per day ( around 19%).

A little extra concerning comorbidities: The Agence nationale de santé publique from France published some interesting numbers on July 23. Among those aged 15 to 44 34% had no or no known underlying conditions. The percentage is similar for the other age groups: 45-64 29%, 65-74 33%, 75+ 35%

The underlying conditions were: obesity (6%), diabetes (16%), respiratory system (13%), heart (34%), high blood pressure ( 25%), neurological (9%), kidneys (12%), immunodeficiency (2%)

Obviously this means that some of the people with underlying conditions had more than just one.

I still have some more data, but this comment is long enough as is...

It's a matter of how deaths are being recorded. My wife's aunt had been in hospital since June with a seperate condition. She then caught coronavirus in the hospital and recently passed away. The cause of death was recorded as the original condition and not that of Covid-19. I wonder how often this has been happening?