Covid today Japan, for the first time more than 30,000 new cases

More than 30,000 new coronavirus cases in Japan, the first time since the pandemic began. The data on confirmed daily infections has exceeded 30,000 today, writes the Kyodo agency which cites one of its counts and recalls the previous daily maximum of August 2021 when 25,992 cases were reported. The Asahi Shimbun links the worrying record to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and points out that the previous daily high was during the “fifth wave” driven by the Delta variant. Behind the latest data there are records of infections reported by various prefectures, starting with Osaka (5,396). A further 5,185 infections have been confirmed in Tokyo, more than 5,000 for the first time since 21 August (5,247 after a record of 5,908 on 13 August, the newspaper recalls). Since the start of the pandemic, Japan has recorded nearly two million infections with over 18,400 deaths.