TOKYO, Sept 10 (NNN-NHK) – Japan reported a total of 20,000,343 COVID-19 cases, as of yesterday, more than doubled in less than two months, from that logged on July 14, statistics showed.
The country registered 99,491 new COVID-19 cases yesterday. A total of 211 people were reported dead, bringing the total death toll to 42,363.
Japan has seen its seventh wave of COVID-19 infections since July, and the number of new confirmed cases and deaths in a single day remains at a high level.
The rapid rise in the number of deaths has made it difficult to cremate the dead in some parts of Japan, local media reported.
In Japan, the number of new infections in the latest week was 69 percent higher than the previous week, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said in a report.
Most of the country’s new deaths, in Jul and Aug, were among people over 70 years old. People aged 70 and above accounted for about 91 percent of COVID-19 deaths between June 29 and Aug 30, Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, reported, citing data from the ministry.
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun said that, the average life expectancy of Japanese men and women was shortened by 0.1 years and 0.07 years in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was the first time in 10 years that the average life expectancy of Japanese people has been shortened since the March 11 earthquake in 2011.
The World Health Organisation said, in the week from Aug 29 to Sept 4, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Japan surpassed 1,160,000, the highest number in the world, for the seventh consecutive week. During the same period, Japan’s death toll from the virus reached 2,059, ranking second in the world, after the United States.– NNN-NHK
