Japan’s COVID-19 Response: What Went Wrong?

On May 24, the U.S. Department of State issued a Level Four “Do Not Travel” warning for Japan, urging U.S. citizens not to travel to Japan due to a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in the country. The warning — which came a month after President Joe Biden showed support for Tokyo hosting the Olympic games as planned in summer of 2021 during a summit meeting with Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide — is another indication that Japan’s response to COVID-19 has gone terribly wrong.

This is an unanticipated turn of events for Japan. When the United States and European countries were hitting the nadir of COVID-19 cases a year ago, Japan was quite successful in containing the spread of the virus. In fact, even with the recent spike in cases, Japan has been more successful in containing COVID-19 compared to other countries. As May 24, for example, Japan had reported around 5,700 infections per million people since the beginning of the pandemic — a far lower case count than many Western countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., which both stood at around 100,000 cases per million people.

Suga made it clear early on that shaping an effective response to COVID-19 is his government’s main focus. In his first press conference as the prime minister on September 16, 2020, for example, Suga identified the COVID-19 response as his top policy priority. He vowed that his government would do everything it could to prevent the “explosive spread” of COVID-19, and work to secure enough vaccines for everyone in Japan by the middle of 2021. He reiterated his government’s commitment to contain COVID-19 and secure enough vaccines for the country in his policy address to the Japanese Diet in January 2021.

Despite those commitments, however, Japan today lags far behind other industrialized countries in the availability of COVID-19 vaccines as well as the rate of those who are vaccinated. As of late May, Japan had vaccinated only 2.8 percent of its population. While vaccines have become more available to younger populations in Europe and the U.S., only healthcare workers and those who are 65 or older are currently eligible for vaccination in Japan.

The government has received intense criticism over its handling of the vaccine rollout. The vaccination reservation system was completely overwhelmed, with countless anecdotes of seniors who, despite enlisting their tech-savvy children and grandchildren’s help in navigating the reservation system, had to spend hours to schedule a vaccination. This has led to many frustrated seniors who have now chosen not to receive their jabs until the vaccine becomes more readily available. Whether Japan can host the Olympics safely for the participating athletes as well as the spectators looks increasingly uncertain.

What went wrong?

First and foremost, Suga vacillated between strict measures to contain COVID-19 on the one hand, and the need to help businesses, particularly the service industry, which had already been badly hit by the loss of revenue in the last year, to stay afloat on the other. This has led to a somewhat half-hearted COVID-19 response from the government, with ambiguous guidance. For instance, the Suga administration so far has declared a state of emergency three times. But rather than declaring a state of emergency for all of Japan, each time the government began by applying the state of emergency to a small number of metropolitan areas and prefectural capitals, only to expand the scope of the emergency declaration later.

Furthermore, Japan’s rigid process of approving medicines and vaccines considerably delayed vaccine distribution. Without an indigenous capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines, Japan is reliant on vaccines developed and manufactured abroad, but the government requires cumbersome domestic trials before approving new vaccines. Suga acknowledged that “most countries overseas” don’t require additional domestic trials for their approval process, and voiced support for changing Japan’s laws. But it’s too late to turn back the clock for the current pandemic. Under the circumstances, the Suga government needs to be looking at ways to free up resources to be further invested in shaping the COVID-19 response — even if that means flattening Japan’s defense budget, despite the mounting pressure from China in the maritime, air, as well as space domain.

Finally, while Suga is still insistent on holding the Summer Olympics as currently scheduled — the Games are set to open on July 23 and run through August 8 — the idea of hosting the Olympics when the country is still trying to pull itself out of the pandemic has not been received well in Japan. Mainichi Shimbun reported on May 22 that their most recent public opinion poll had over 60 percent of the respondents supporting either cancellation of the Olympic Games or its re-postponement. Even in the poll taken by Yomiuri Shimbun, which usually takes a sympathetic stance toward the government, close to 60 percent of the respondents said the Tokyo Olympic should be cancelled. Stubbornly moving ahead with the Olympics without adequately addressing the public’s concern about the government’s response to COVID-19, including vaccine availability and vaccination expediency, is a far cry from what Suga’s promise to serve in “the government that works for the people.”

Suga recently expanded the geographical areas to be covered under the latest state of emergency declaration, which is in effect until the end of May. If vaccine availability does not show marked improvement by then, Suga will face the bleak prospect that he would go down in Japanese political history as the prime minister who failed the country in pandemic.