As the government is becoming increasingly concerned about a rise in COVID-19 cases across the country, there are growing doubts about the start of a nationwide travel subsidy program in early July as initially planned.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is likely to wait until after Sunday’s Upper House election before deciding whether to launch a new tourism promotion campaign, government sources said Tuesday.
Some observers say Kishida thinks it inadvisable to make a decision on the matter before the election. One option is to make a decision next week after hearing opinions from experts.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a news conference that the government will make an appropriate decision after comprehensively assessing infection trends, including numbers of new cases, hospital bed occupancy rates, and numbers of patients and fatalities.
“At the end of the day, it’s the prime minister who makes the decision, but it seems difficult for the campaign to start as initially scheduled,” said a person linked to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The new subsidy campaign would be a nationwide version of subsidy programs currently implemented at the prefectural level to encourage local travel among residents.
Under the new campaign, up to ¥11,000 ($81) would be provided to each traveler per day in the form of discounts and coupons to go toward paying for travel and other expenses, such as dining and shopping.
In mid-June, Kishida said the campaign would begin in the first half of July, provided the infection situation had improved. The transport ministry has said it wants to start the program sometime in early July.
Tokyo confirmed 8,341 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, more than double the level the week before and exceeding the 8,000 mark for the first time since April 14.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases in the capital stood at 4,426.6 per day, up 86.8% from Wednesday last week, according to the metropolitan government.
“The pace of increase in new cases is accelerating, and the number of hospitalized patients has more than doubled in half a month,” a metropolitan government official said, expressing alarm at the development.
Across Japan, a total of 36,189 new cases were recorded on Tuesday, more than an 80% increase from a week earlier, with each prefecture seeing higher case counts. The last time the nation saw an day with more than 30,000 new cases was May 26.
On June 30, the Tokyo government raised the COVID-19 alert level by a notch to the second-highest on its four-level scale in response to a rise in infections for two consecutive weeks.
Meanwhile, Osaka Prefecture reported 4,621 cases on Wednesday, more than double the level a week earlier.
In Aichi Prefecture, where new cases had increased on Tuesday by about 80% from the week before to 2,481, Gov. Hideaki Omura described the surge as “not a rebound, but clearly the onslaught of a seventh wave.”
“Cases are increasing in a surprising manner,” Omura told a news conference, calling on the public to get a booster vaccine shot if they have not done so while at the same time taking steps to avoid infections.
