Japan is emerging as one of the riskiest places for the spread of the coronavirus, prompting criticism that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has misfired on its policies to block the outbreak.
The number of infections in Japan has more than doubled in the past week to 74, rivaling Singapore as the country outside mainland China with the most cases. The government is being faulted for being too slow to bar visitors from China and too lax in its quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where infections surged during two weeks docked in Yokohama.
While the hundreds of cases aboard the ship have grabbed the world's attention, they are not counted among Japan's total. What appears to be more troublesome is that Japan is starting to see a surge in cases in multiple areas across the country — sometimes with little to link the outbreaks.
Adding to the worries is that passengers began leaving the quarantined vessel Wednesday amid concerns some might later test positive and take the virus to more parts of Japan. The situation is growing more alarming as Japan's elderly population and work ethic present high-risk scenarios for the outbreak's spread.
With the cases mounting internally, Japan received a rare rebuke from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the way it managed the quarantine on the cruise ship, saying "it may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission." The U.S. and others placed a 14-day quarantine on repatriated nationals, but about 500 people cleared by Japan left the ship Wednesday to go about their lives and were told to call authorities if they feel ill.
"The Japanese government's decision to wait for the China-friendly WHO to make its much-delayed declaration of a global health emergency led to the first cases of domestic person-to-person transmission and tarnished the country's international reputation," Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute, wrote in a report.
"The coronavirus will probably cause a substantial amount of economic damage in Japan," Koo wrote. The Abe administration, he says, "managed to completely drop the ball on this issue."
While a handful of the cases in the country are evacuees from Hubei Province, the vast majority are Japan residents, many with no history of traveling to China. Among those have been several taxi drivers, suspected of having extensive interactions with the public before their diagnoses.
