New Delhi: The United States has warned its citizens against traveling to Japan and Sri Lanka due to Covid-19 concerns, media reported on Tuesday.
Amid rising coronavirus cases in the two Asian countries, the US State Department issued a travel advisory warning against travel there. “This week, the following Travel Advisories have been assessed and reissued with updates, raised to a Level 4 – Do Not Travel: Japan, Sri Lanka,” the State Department said on Monday.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an alert that Americans should avoid all travel to Japan and advised anyone who does have to visit the country to get vaccinated prior to traveling there.
“Because of the current situation in Japan even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan,” it added.
Of late, Sri Lanka has also reported a sudden spike in infections. On Monday, it reported nearly 3,000 new cases, with a weekly average of 3,100. The island country has recorded nearly 1,245 deaths and 165,000 infections so far. At present, it has 26,540 active cases, while as many patients are under investigation.
The US advisory for Japan came two months before the Olympic Games 2021 are set to be held in Tokyo from July 23 to August 8, despite a spike in pandemic caseloads in Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka. Its people are also protesting against the event, already postponed for a year in 2020 due to Covid-19.
Despite dire warnings, however, Japan is going ahead with the event, apparently under pressure from the International Olympics Association (IOA). It has opened more vaccination centers ahead of the Olympics 2021 at a time Osaka City is facing its India-like moment of truth: lack of ventilators and beds for the mounting number of Covid-19 patients.
Japan is now bracing to bear the brunt of the pandemic’s rising fourth wave. Alarming media reports said that hospitals in Osaka are buckling under a huge wave of new coronavirus infections. The facility is running out of beds and ventilators as exhausted doctors warned of a “system collapse”, and advised against holding the Olympics this summer.
Japan’s western region, home to only 9 million people or 7 percent of the population, has seen deaths of a third of the nation’s death toll in May. Nearly 4,000 Covid-19 positive cases were reported last week, a five-fold increase over February.
The speed at which Osaka’s healthcare system was overwhelmed underscores the challenges of hosting a major global sports event in two months’ time, particularly as only about half of Japan’s medical staff have completed inoculations, according to media reports.
Popular anger against holding the Olympic Games in the middle of the pandemic has surfaced. “The Olympics should be stopped, because we already have failed to stop the flow of new variants from England, and next might be an inflow of Indian variants,” said Akira Takasu, the head of emergency medicine at OMPUH, media reported.
“In the Olympics, 70,000 or 80,000 athletes and the people will come to this country from around the world. This may be a trigger for another disaster in the summer.”
But Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is determined to hold the Olympics in Tokyo and has made an ambitious pledge to finish vaccinating the country’s 36 million elderly people by the end of July, despite skepticism.
Japan also has a dire shortage of medical staff who can give shots since only doctors and nurses can legally do so — and they are already busy treating Covid-19 patients. Even dentists and retired nurses have been roped in to vaccinate the people.
The country’s vaccination drive started late, in February, and was hampered by supply shortages and organizational hurdles. As a result, the country is lagging significantly behind other developed nations. Only about 1.9% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Japan’s efficient healthcare system has been increasingly overwhelmed by the latest surge, with some hospitals running out of beds and ventilators. The country has recorded more than 700,000 infections and 12,000 Covid-19 deaths from the virus until now since 2020.
So far only around 4.7% of the country’s elderly of 65 or older have received at least one dose of either Pfizer, Moderna, or AstraZeneca.
Tokyo is still Japan’s biggest Covid hotspot, and the capital currently has a weekly average of 650 cases per day. In Osaka, which reported a spike of over 1,000 new cases a day in April, the situation is worsening rapidly, with reports of hospitals running out of beds and ventilators.
In late April the city saw a spike of more than 1,000 new cases a day. It now averages around half that number each day.
Increasingly, angry Japanese, including business magnets, are demanding the government to call off the Olympics at the earliest. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son tweeted that “more than 80% of people want the Olympics to be postponed or canceled. Who and on what authority is it being forced through?”
Medical workers have also repeatedly issued warnings.
“They want 500 nurses to volunteer at the Olympics. That means more Covid patients won’t get the care they need.”
