Japan Sets Record With Over 203,000 New Daily COVID-19 Cases

Sputnik News

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The daily tally of COVID-19 cases in Japan has surpassed 203,000, breaking the record since the start of the pandemic, Japanese media reported on Wednesday.

The previous record was set last week at nearly 201,000 cases registered in a day.

According to Kyodo, over half of Japan's 47 prefectures, including Hokkaido and Kyoto, logged a record number of coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours.

Tokyo has reported 29,036 new cases of COVID-19, while Osaka prefecture recorded 21,860 new infections, raising the alert level to the highest, requesting elderly population to refrain from leaving home for nonessential reasons.

The Japanese health ministry announced on Tuesday that the number of cases nationwide nearly doubled over the past week.

"New infections have been continuously increasing at a rapid pace to its highest ever level across Japan," health minister Shigeyuki Goto was quoted as saying by Kyodo.

Currently, Japan is facing the seventh wave of COVID-19 sparked by an extensive spread of Omicron BA.5 strain. At the same time, the Japanese authorities are not yet considering switching employees to remote work or introducing restrictions on people's movement.

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