Japan reported 2,796 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday. The number of coronavirus-related deaths was 33.
The Tokyo metropolitan government reported 572 new cases of the coronavirus, up 220 from Tuesday. The number is the result of 1,428 tests conducted on Dec 6.
The tally brought Tokyo's cumulative total to 44,927.
By age group, the highest number of cases were people in their 20s (130), followed by 116 in their 30s and 80 in their 40s.
The number of infected people hospitalized with severe symptoms in Tokyo is 59, one down from Tuesday, health officials said.
After Tokyo, the prefectures with the most cases were Osaka (427), Aichi (245), Kanagawa (245), Hokkaido (197), Hyogo (158), Saitama (145), Chiba (93), Kyoto (75), Hiroshima (72), Fukuoka (54), Gunma (49), Okinawa (43), Miyagi (43) and Gifu (36).
- External Link
- https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/
81 Comments
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Fanny Greene
jeez. if they were testing alot it would be well over 1000
ClippetyClop
This shows how many deads and how many other not deads but not of joyful conditions.
https://covid19japan.com/
iraira
Matej
the death you seek can be found by Googling “world of meters coronavirus by country” or on the Johns Hopkins website.
nonu6976
wow, 2900yen with results the next day is a seriously good deal. Makes you wonder at all these other places charging 10x that and having to wait 3 days..
nonu6976
Unrelated, but I wonder if the folks in the photo are happy to have their faces publicized lining up outside a PCR test center.
nonu6976
Rivera
I’m wondering what are the rest of the age’s
for the remaining 246 are.
20’s(130), 30’s(116) and 40’s(80)
326 out off 572.
sf2k
572 positives out of 1428 tests!!!!! Holy cow. Imagine if they were really looking
A Johnson
Typical 2-man drive through in my little town does ~20 tests /hr. The climic in the picture should be cranking out 10-15% of Tokyo’s test is a day,,, wtf? Or is reporting voluntary?
Luddite
Stop making people pay for tests, they should be free.
kyronstavic
Yep, they'd detect a truckload of "cases" but very few ill symptomatic people.
JapanBliss
572/1428= 40%!
it’s usually 5% or thereabouts.
40% is very alarming.
sf2k
BTW the photo is not social distancing. Every other person should be a blank space for social distancing, roughly 2 meters apart.
kyronstavic
You're missing the point. If they were randomly testing large numbers of people, not just those showing symptoms, they'd probably pick up lots of people carrying the virus (or something similar or remnants of virus RNA) but showing no symptoms.
Japan's testing regime is skewed to testing people with symptoms already and people in the sports and entertainment industries who are regularly tested and apparently integral to the country's survival.
Raw Beer
By going to the link in the article, and then clicking on "Click here to see a running total of deaths over time"
we see that according to the official numbers from the Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health:
Nobody died of covid in Tokyo on Dec 6.
Do the hustle
30% of tests came back positive? This is what happens when you only test people with symptoms. Didn’t the Japanese authorities read that half of the people carrying the virus do not get symptoms? They really need to start random testing on mass. Testing a few thousand in a city of 25 million is in no way an accurate assessment of virus case numbers.
Goodlucktoyou
No point to care anymore. Government doesn’t care. Olympics in 6 months. No testing, 3 day foreign business visas with no quarantine, buying vaccines without proper trials...
Raw Beer
One person died of covid in Tokyo on Dec 7.
The information is there for anyone to see.
Raw Beer
... I provided the Dec 6 result because that is what the above article is about.
"The Tokyo metropolitan government on Wednesday reported 572 new cases of the coronavirus, up 220 from Tuesday. The number is the result of 1,428 tests conducted on Dec 6."
Meiyouwenti
People take Covid tests when they suspect they have contracted the virus, so inevitably the positive rate of those tested is much higher than in the general population.
Whatsnext
Pcr testing on people without symptoms is flawed. The pcr test are not actually testing for the virus, it is actually testing for genetic material that is believed to be related to the virus. The test can also be amped up through cycling more and it is known that when cycling is amped up high you may get more positives. Japan cycles at 40 at the moment.
Even the creator of pcr said if you amp up enough you can find any genetics you are claiming to be looking for.
The proper way to use a pcr test is after someone gets symptoms they use it as a test to back up the doctors suspicion on what virus it maybe. That was the standard way to use pcr test. It's hasn't been until covid19 have the pcr test been used for people with no symptoms.
As far as the cycles go, there is no world wide standard for how many cycles are use for the covid19 test. This is why you have very high numbers even in some states in america compared to other states. Japan has standardized their test and I even heard they may reduce the cycles because it would seem as though 40 may be showing false positives.
My theory is the Japanese government understands that this virus is hyped up but cannot suddenly come out with the truth because of the mass hysteria that the media has already created and must take their time calming down the public.
kyronstavic
Sorry, I should have said mass testing instead of random testing - lots of countries have been doing mass testing, and this is what has been causing the huge numbers of "cases." Refusing to test symptomatic people is pure incompetence and should be done without question.
But my point still stands, in that the more people you test, the more positives you you'll get, but the greater percentage of these will be asymptomatic. Japan's figures of 30% positive or whatever for the day are bogus because of the skewed testing regime. So it looks more frightening. That might suit the interests of some people, like your friendly neighbourhood covid vax salesman, but it doesn't reflect reality.
vanityofvanities
What would happen to Japan if the entire nation locks down for a week? Doctors say it is the best way to reduce infections.
Raw Beer
Yeah, experts world-wide are complaining about the cycle numbers being to high.
I think anything over a Ct of 35 can't be used as proof of infection.
Luddite
Wrong. The U.K. and other European countries have been random testing for months. That’s how they have a more accurate picture of numbers, clusters etc. Random testing is important for documenting the spread of the disease demographically and geographically. It also picks up asymptomatic carriers, how else would we know about them? It is true that Japan is refusing to test those with symptoms and those who have been in contact with those with the virus,, which is negligent.
Romain
I was surprised to be on the news today. I don't have symptoms but I made a trip for the work and after a week in self isolation I wanted to make a quick test (just if I am asymptomatic). Seems pretty normal to me. Nobody was social distancing, that's why I am not looking in the same direction as the rest of the group.
Waywardnihon
These vague comparisons are ill founded and uncited.
Looking at an actual comparison over the same period, in the same conditions, I recommend the following site, based on the American experience:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
William77
Yeah sure,why don’t they test more as they do back in the old continent?
Romain
I made a reservation a week ago. The process was simple : I paid. I was given the kit. I took myself a sample of saliva. I closed it and handed it. It was over in 5 minutes. There was 5 spaces inside so I think 60 tests in one hour, more or less.
Thank you for the kind welcome.
Alex
I find the testing weird, so they only test people with symptoms so of course they will be a higher percentage with covid . ... sorry am I understanding that correctly? It’s not like a blanket testing of a number if people ???
virusrex
That is false, specific controls can be used to discard false positives extremely easy, that way you can increase the Ct as much as you would like without increasing the postives, the limit of detection would remain the same.
And the test do test for the virus, because realistically speaking there is no other source for the viral sequences but the virus itself, and it is required for the virus to replicate in the person in order to have enough to be detected.
PCR is used to detect asymptomatic infections on many other pathogens, from HIV to hepatitis C, there is nothing new in what is done for COVID-19, and this is important because the purpose is not only to find out what is the disease the person is presenting but also to detect asymptomatic cases that can still spread the disease.
No, that is also false, if you increase the cycles enough you will get amplification that is not specific for the virus, but there are many other controls that would allow anybody to understand this is the case, so there is no real possibility to mistake those reactions for true positives.
There is no standard number of cycles in the world because that depends on many other things (like primers and reagents) and because its extremely simple to control the reaction to automatically disregard results that are not significant.
Yes, people that don't understand at all what is being done usually have impossible and irrational explanations about their misunderstandings.
No, expert complain about using Cts as the sole parameter to determine positivity, fortunately that is terribly easy to avoid, So its irrelevant.
That is because you ignore everything about the detection technique and how is controlled, the real experts know perfectly well that using different sets of primers, using probes instead of intercalating fluorescent dyes, including melting curve analysis, duplicating the samples or simply including negative controls makes so easy to discard false positive samples that even a cheap real-time PCR machine can do it automatically, no matter how many cycles are run.
lostrune2
The most danger is the pool of asymptomatic but ill population
Because they don't know they have the virus and could be spreading it
Tom
ZorotoToday 06:14 pm JST
The hospitals don't have to treat anyone who has not tested positive. So the burden can be controlled easily by limiting the access to testing, which is exactly what's happening in Japan.
This number is so ridiculous that I almost cannot believe it. It's just so unlikely low.
TARA TAN KITAOKA
Total shut down needed.
i@n
Wow that's bad
virusrex
The hospitals don't have to treat anybody that is not symptomatic, tested positive or not.
A sure way to increase the burden is to avoid testing asymptomatic cases, so they can spread the disease to the vulnerable population that will become heavily symptomatic, then the health services will not be able to help them all.
On the other hand testing asymptomatic people will not increase the load on hospitals, because they do not need to be hospitalized, only isolated. And if you isolate as many of the cases you can find in the general population then you can slow the spreading and prevent involving people that if infected will actually need hospitalization.
Raw Beer
Many experts world-wide are saying the same thing I am saying. You just say it's false and throw in some fancy words that don't prove anything, it doesn't really make any point. If you truly understood and believed what you are trying to say you would be able to actually explain it clearly.
virusrex
References, it would not be the first time you completely misunderstood something and the experts are saying something completely different. Those "fancy words" you are unable to understand are perfectly valid reasons why the criticism does not apply, at least in a first world situation like in Japan. The danger of trying to have religious-like opinions about something you don't understand is that you can be proved wrong easily by anyone that understand even a little bit more.
In this case its extremely unlikely that experts that actually use the technique somehow completely forgot that there are many controls that can be used even automatically to eliminate false positives so the number of cycles becomes irrelevant.
i@n
I really wish there's someone here who could shed light on the issue of false positives.
What virusrex is saying is that the pcr test can be made near infallible.
Ok granted, but in real world scenarios is this really the case?
From what I've read before, as best I can remember, the various manufacturer of test kits puts the false positive rate from .2 to .7.
And actual use in the field puts the positive rate from .4 to .9.
I don't how reliable these figures are but if anyone can confirm and validate the actual values it would be most appreciated
Kobe White Bar Owner
Wife’s floor at her hospital is now full of COVID patients. No fresh tests since the original outbreak over a week ago. Low on staff but the government send 10 bureaucrats to walk around aimlessly and get in the way everyday. I know it my wife but come on Japan test those on the front line regularly and stop another Diamondo princessu!
theResident
Welcome Romain - Yes , that seems to be the case recently as you are correctly and reporting at first hand. You will however now notice Zoroto going oddly quiet as this is NOT what he wanted to hear. Also @Zoroto, @Luddite is quite correct about testing elsewhere, especially in the UK in hotspots. You (Zoroto), old chap need to do a little more research on what is going on country by country. There is a LOT wrong with the situation here in Japan, but you are just another one to criticize for the the pure hell of it but to offer no solutions, suggestion of solution or what we might do to help ourselves.
The days of the 45,000 Yen test are last months news and can be found a lot cheaper with same day results if need be for a small premium if done before 11am, and they are not even close to the figures you love to bandy about.
Mocheake
I don't know but this feels like those moments right before that ticking time bomb explodes.
Luddite
You don’t think so, so it can’t be happening?
It is happening. Households are selected at random and testing kits sent through the post. People swab themselves and send the test back. Other tests have been done via the post like this for many years, including those for bowel cancer and chlamydia.
They are also testing faeces samples collected from sewers to identify clusters.
n1k1
https://www.bbc.com/news/54270373
Perhaps this will help .
Matt Carter
PCR TEST done on a fruit and goat and came back positive.......
n1k1
Bossman !
I always wondered about the privacy aspect of these photos ? Did anyone asked for your permission to be on the front page ?
didou
Do those people on the pictures make a test randomely ?
If no symptom and no real need for a test, it is better not to go in my opinion. Otherwise, such a test should be done on a regular basis. In France, many people with no symptoms rushed to some centers just to know , that centers became overcrowded and it resulted in long delays to get the results of test. And the ones who really needed to be tested could not do it on time
Romain
And what about ill people without symptoms? That could happen. You can see that place in Shimbashi isn't crowded and you have to make a reservation, I did not take another person place.
Nope, just saw a guy with a camera, I asked myself what he was doing taking photos with a so nice camera (but others were taking photos with smartphones).
The force isn't strong with this one.
n1k1
From context I think he thinks Japan deliberately controls the C19 tests to save the Olympics. His solution for covid19 effectively i reckon is enforce lockdown and test as much as you can everyday for six months until you get zero cases and then deal with the social and economic consequences which compared to covid19 are manageable.
Of course it the virus turns up again do it again. If the vaccines don't work do it again. If the medical insurance system collapses , not his businesses. If people can't go to work because a person in the same floor tested positive not his businesses. If families can't pay rent their problem they should have saved money.
Everything's Abe's fault and he should fix it.
I am not sure but I think that is what he is saying .
Pukey2
zoroto:
I can confirm what Luddite said. I have a relative in the UK and she was selected at random (by post, I think) for a test. She tested negative. She also had another test a few months later because she was due to take a relative to the hospital for a routine operation. She wouldn't have been allowed in had she not been tested. She was quite happy she got two free tests. You can't get a free test unless you have a valid reason to get one and are showing symptoms. Otherwise, you have to pay at a private clinic. I was also told that tests in France are free and available to anyone who wants one.
Whatsnext
virusrex,
you said "there is no other source for the viral sequences but the virus itself"
that is also false. pcr test are looking for genetic material that is thought to be related to the specific virus.
The create of the pcr test himself said that it can be used to find anything that you claim you are looking for by the amount of times you amplify it.
Its pretty weird that you keep up on JT and keep spreading bull like this.
JT deletes my comments and you spread bull. Do you have a job? I do! thats why i cant keep wasting my time with you. Besides, why put the effort when I know half the time JT deletes my comments.
What an Echo chamber this place is. Might as well call it CHINA today!
virusrex
Practical reasons can make the test fail, but proper controls can catch most of the systematic problems. Other reasons (not just high number of cycles) can bring false positives but never to a degree that would impact numbers reported on a community level (lets say 572 cases are in reality from 567 to 577) The NIID in Japan has reported several improvements over the WHO protocol so it is rational to think at least the easiest measures are being included in the tests done officially.
That is incorrect, one of the 2 (3 in the case of Japan) regions targeted by the primers is shared between the highly pathogenic coronavirus strains, that means it can detect SARS-CpV-2, SARS or MERS, but since there is no report of SARS or MERS (and those do not produce asymptomatic infections like in COVID-19) that still means the only realistic possibility to detect it is COVID-19, none of the common pathogens present in humans can be detected with this set of primers.
And since another (or another 2) regions are being tested at the same time that makes it much more specific, no other species of virus can give a specific reaction on all the regions. The test detects reliably only COVID-19
No, you already made that mistake and I corrected you, the creator said that uncontrolled reactions at high cycles would give amplification of other sequences. But since it is trivially easy to set several other controls that is meaningless.
What do you think is the result if a sample gives positive to one set of primers but negative to another? or if doing it in triplicate gives a positive result on the cycle 36 another at cycle 38 and another at cycle 42?
Answer, they are obviously recognized as false positives and retested, so are samples that give positives at a higher cycle than a negative control (RNA taken from sterile cells, or swabs from 2 years ago for example, that is impossible to contain the virus).
So are many other things that are used to control the reaction, probes in the middle of the primers that increase specificity and eliminate false positives, melting curve analysis that can detect if the region of the genome amplified are different from the viral ones.
Your whole argument is like saying that if you test for glucose in blood sometimes you can get false positive results for diabetes if people have just eaten. Yeah sure, every doctor knows it and that is why special ways to conduct the test (like doing a glucose response curve) can be performed to eliminate those false positives.
Try to understand the test first, what are the steps, the controls, the procedure, after you understand it you will also get why focusing on the number of cycles or the specificity of one single set of primers is not a real argument.
i@n
Thanks @n1k1
i@n
Thanks @virusrex
JPGB
@virusrex Up and at it early this morning, otsukare sama. I read through all your comments and they were easy to grasp, thanks for your enlightening posts.
Yoshi
This is actually incorrect. South Korea had their drive-thru testing (testing all drivers passing through the roads where centers were set up) and New Zealand had testing centers set up in the parking lots of supermarkets for grocery shoppers to test themselves, regardless of the presence of symptoms.
drlucifer
How long will this go on. Unbelievable that there zero calls from even the so called experts or any governor for increase testing to grasp the spread of this virus so that concrete measures can be taken to mitigate the spread,
SuzieQ
I got PCR tested the other day. It involved me dribbling in to a test tube and then handing that back to the doctor... no swabs or anything else... is that normal?
drlucifer
You cannot say zoroto has offered no soln or suggestion, he and many others here have called for increased testing. He and many others have reminded everyone to avoid crowds, wash hands and wear mask, what else do you want him to do ?
Raw Beer
Well this paper shows how PCR tests with a Ct (cycle threshold) above 34 indicate that the patients are not contagious. The paper is from the group of Dr. Raoult, who Virusrex does not like. Raoult is a highly respected expert of infectious diseases and has treated many thousands of covid patients with a very high success rate. And many doctors world-wide are following his treatment protocol.
The paper is from April, but in a very recent interview he mentions that when he retested external samples (not from his institute) he found in some cases false positive rates as high as 40%. He also discusses the corruption in big pharma, governments, and the scientific community (I suspect that is why virusrex hates him). I recommend people give him a listen (Dr. Didier Raoult).
Anyway, it is possible that the Japanese tests are great and have a low false positive rate. But if they are using a Ct of 40, as someone above mentioned, that is worrying. And I would never just take the word of someone who is clearly pushing a big pharma agenda, no matter how many fancy words they use.
Raw Beer
Oooops!
I forgot to provide the link to the paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7185831/
virusrex
As expected you completely misunderstood the paper and their conclusions. Somehow in your mind "not contagious" meant "not infected" when in reality those are two very different things. It is well know that patients that actually have been very contagious at some point eventually begin to recover and defeat the infection, viral remains will still be detected but since the test is not made to assess "contagiousness" then it is not a false positive, the patient is an infected case, no false positive at all.
See? that is why is so important to ask for references when people that have limited understanding of the topic try to talk about it, it is much more likely their argument is based in wrong conclusions.
It is not me who does not like him but his peers, that have presented evidence to accuse him of scientific malpractice and fraud, for which he has not been able to defend himself, his papers are part of the evidence of the abuse he committed by falsifying and manipulating information to support his mistaken beliefs.
He was respected as some point but right now he wasted all that reputation on his unethical actions, being very successful in treating patients of COVID is no special thing either, everywhere in the world that is the norm, the problem is that Raoutl falsified and manipulated clinical trials information to support his pet theory and put his patients in unnecessary risk. This of course is of no importance to science deniers that latch to even more morally wrong people as long as they go on record with something that contradicts science. It proves that for science deniers the importance is not about finding the truth, but misleading people into sharing their religious-like beliefs, even if that means putting themselves on the side of convicted fraudsters, quacks and liars.
It is only worrying for people that do not understand the technique, as you have accepted when perfectly valid controls are just "fancy words" from you. I already told you that controls are sufficient to eliminate the vast majority of systematic false positives, you have no reference to prove these controls are not enough.
i@n
Thanks for the link @Raw Beer
Jind
This is ridiculous. Tokyo metro population is about 40 million.
Just testing only 1,428 people???
Be careful. There are a lot of infected people not tested walking around infecting others.
Trying to keep number of infected low because of Olympics.
i@n
I took a quick look I think I've read something similar before. It discusses the implication of false positives on testing everyone who wants to get tested regardless of presence of symptoms.
This is a reason why I want to know the actual false positive rates as measured/observed in the field.
Alex
I'm not making light of this but in such a high density city like Tokyo it could be way worse.
Zeram1
602 cases reported in Tokyo today :(