Many countries are competing for materials to carry out PCR tests. The difficulty in securing adequate supplies could continue for at least the rest of this year.

But they hardly test anyway. Think they'll be fine with it. Bring on the Olympics!

No problem for Japan as they have one of the lowest rates of testing in the world. Government must be overjoyed with this justification for their limited restricted testing policy. Olympics can move to a no testing policy as well, just as its no vaccine policy.

The big problem is that PCR tests are not done only for COVID, in countries like Japan is not even a major share of the tests done, many other processes require real time PCR tests to be performed on hundreds of samples daily. With the end of fiscal year season already here many laboratories will struggle to get stock enough to keep working uninterrupted until April.

Any excuse to stop testing will do.

For months I've had to switch from my usual brands of disposable lab supplies to other brands as they were out of stock. The price of nitrile gloves has shot up almost 4-fold! I hope they can fix this soon.

So I guess even more people cannot leave and enter Japan...but god forbid if no foreign spectators can not come...and have no 14 days and unrestricted train travel.

That’s rather embarrassing... Still not have been capable of researching and producing a vaccine is one thing, but here it’s only about in comparison simple bio liquids and chemicals as laboratory supply. Such things to produce itself should be an easy task for the third biggest economy, or not?