Japan's slow vaccine roll-out threatens recovery

TOKYO • Japan's vaccination drive finally kicks into gear around four months after the start of inoculations in the United States and Britain, a slow roll-out that has generated further criticism of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's handling of the pandemic.

The doses for people aged 65 and over are the first vaccinations for members of the public in Japan after priority was given to front-line medical staff.

Japan will prioritise its 36 million seniors over the age of 65 before opening up vaccinations to people with pre-existing health conditions and then younger age groups.

But the slow roll-out means struggling businesses and fearful shoppers will have to hold out for longer as the recovery of the economy is delayed by as much as two years.

The tardy start comes as stricter measures were reinstated yesterday to quell an uptick in virus cases in the capital, fuelling discontent with Mr Suga in an election year, as the government, like many around the world, lurches between tightening and loosening guidelines on activity. It also adds to smouldering doubts over Tokyo's readiness to host the Olympics in July, with no timeline for when most people will be inoculated.

Japan has no domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine of its own, and its late roll-out stems from a dependence on imported shots that were initially in limited supply.

Another factor was a strict approval process that required local clinical trials for foreign vaccines. So far, Japan has given the green light only to Pfizer-BioNTech's jabs.

Still, Mr Suga's government is showing little appetite to make up for lost time. The first batches of vaccines for people over 65 will be limited to 1,000 doses for most areas of the country, with additional doses sent weekly.

Mr Taro Kono, Japan's vaccine point man and a possible successor to Mr Suga, told Bloomberg that the rate of Covid-19 inoculations is unlikely to pick up speed until next month.

Even Mr Kono acknowledged that residents of small villages may end up having an easier time getting their shots at first, just because a single shipment of doses might be enough to cover the population, while supply in big cities falls short of meeting people's needs.

The hit to consumer spending, which makes up more than half of gross domestic product, will hold back growth and make Japan an economic laggard this year, he said.

Not everyone agrees.

"The benefits of vaccination are bigger for countries that failed to control the virus infection as well as Japan," said Ms Yuki Masujima at Bloomberg Economics.

"Thanks to the relatively low number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Japan, the negative impact from Japan's delay in vaccination should only shave at most 0.3 percentage point off GDP in 2021."

Still, she added, that will leave Japan recovering at a slower pace than its peers and it will still take until 2023 before the country's annual output gets back to its 2019 pre-pandemic level, compared with this year for the US and next year for the euro zone.

BLOOMBERG