Country set to reach goal of 1 million vaccine doses a day

TOKYO • Japan has administered at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to 20 million people - or about one in six people in the country - as its inoculation campaign picks up speed after a slow start.

It took 15 weeks from the delivery of the first jab on Feb 17 to administer at least a first dose to 10 million people, but just two weeks for the next 10 million.

Mr Taro Kono, the minister in charge of vaccination, forecast yesterday that Japan is likely to reach its goal of one million doses a day - much-derided for being over-ambitious when mooted by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga - by this week.

The pace is set to pick up even further as the inoculation drive will officially begin at workplaces and universities next Monday.

As at yesterday, there have been more than 3,100 applications to be included in the programme, which will cover about 12.8 million students, workers and their families.

Applicants include companies across diverse sectors, such as electronic giants Fujitsu and Panasonic, automaker Toyota, airline All Nippon Airways, real estate developer Mori Building, telecommunications giant SoftBank, e-commerce giant Rakuten, and beverage maker Suntory.

Further adding momentum towards normalisation, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said that Japan will start issuing Covid-19 vaccine passports for overseas travel from next month.

Latest available Cabinet Office data shows that 27.7 million doses had been administered as at Wednesday; 20 million of them were for people receiving their first dose in a two-shot regimen.

A total of 7.63 million people - or 6.1 per cent of the population of 125.4 million - have been fully vaccinated.

Mr Suga has set a goal to complete vaccinating all who are willing among the country's 36 million senior citizens by the end of next month, and the rest of the public by October or November.

But Mr Kono, who is also Administrative Reform Minister, said at a news conference for the foreign media earlier this week that he was concerned about vaccine hesitancy among youth - which has contributed to slowing take-up rates in the United States.

He also said, in response to a question from The Straits Times, that Japan "should have done better" in digitalising the process.

He added that this was a "good step forward" to nudge Japan into the digital era.