Japan Outbreak of Covid-19 Imminent
When I was tracking the spread of the virus outside of China I thought super-cities like Singapore and Hong Kong were more of a threat, but now with cases dotting many locations in Japan, it’s high population density and listening to the WHO too much have made community spread there now inevitable.
It will get worse in Japan before it gets better. Cases related to the Diamond Princess cruise ship will complicate Japan’s lack of quick response.
The health minister, Katsunobu Kato, said the first fatality was a woman in her 80s who had been in hospital since 1 February, when she was diagnosed with pneumonia.
In Japan’s case this really is just the tip of the iceberg.
The woman, a resident of Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo, was the mother-in-law of a taxi driver who also became a newly confirmed case, Japanese media reported.
As compared with places like Taiwan that are obsessed over safe guarding and Beijing, where everyone now must self-quarantine who comes back to the city, Japan has been very lax.
What I find concerning is the multitude of areas in Japan now implicated. Authorities also confirmed two more cases: a doctor in his 50s who works at a hospital in western Japan and a man in his 20s who lives in Chiba, near Tokyo.
