Says the Japan Times:

• 14% of the prefecture’s 13,770 COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized, leaving the majority to fend for themselves.
• Tokyo’s latest hospitalization rate, in comparison, is 37%.
• A government advisory panel sees rates of less than 25% as a trigger to consider imposition of a state of emergency.

Based on these sorts of numbers it appears likely an extension of the Osaka State of Emergency is likely.

That is the highest level since the vaccination campaign began. As of 16 May, roughly 30% (20.3 million) of the French population has at least received one dose of the vaccine with around 13.4% (8.9 million) of the population being fully vaccinated.

A defensible public health precaation that was unfortunately accompanied by a disgusting and disgraceful threat to jail anyone arriving from the country for 5 years, along with a heavy monetary fine. The jail threat applied to anyone arriving from India, including Australian citizens wanting to return home.

Overnight the Australian government backed down on this act of malice, removing the threats.

Flights from India will reopen from May 15 and passengers will not be thrown into the slammer.

The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison:

The vaccine rollout in Japan is lagging dramatically as the only approved vaccine so far has been Pfizer’s vaccine. As of 29 April, just over 995,000 persons (0.8%) have been fully vaccinated in Japan with roughly only 2% of its population having received at least one vaccine dose. Those are rather poor statistics to say the least and does not make for an optimistic narrative that the country could break free of the virus cycle for now.

I saw news earlier the US state of New Jersey is to offer a free beer (not to the above age group, of course) to people who get vaccinated.

On May 4, Biden will announce that non-US citizens won’t be able to return from India.

I’m surprised the US hasn’t done this already. I also believe the US was getting pressure from other countries for this because people were entering 3rd countries from India via the US.

No further details were provided. He did add that “The virus has been mutating since the start of the pandemic.”

—

The figure still keeps on the high side but the good news is that daily cases appear to be plateauing in the 20,000 to 30,000 range in recent weeks. Total active cases is seen increasing slightly to ~299,600 while total deaths have increased to 82,544.

Medical capacity continues to be stretched thin as there were 5,047 (-16) virus patients requiring intensive care as of yesterday with there being just 2,730 (11%) intensive care beds still available across the country.