TOKYO (REUTERS, XINHUA) - Japan's southern prefecture of Okinawa reported record daily numbers of Covid-19 cases on Saturday (Jan 15), fuelled by the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Okinawa, which hosts 70 per cent of US military facilities in Japan, said it recorded 1,829 new coronavirus cases on Saturday.

The governor of the prefecture, Mr Denny Tamaki, previously said he was "furious" about what he called inadequate infection controls at US bases that allowed the variant to spread to the public.

Japan has since stepped up coronavirus restrictions in three regions that host US military facilities, which have also announced stricter infection controls.

Though Japan stopped the entry of almost all foreign travellers into the country last November, the US military moves staff in and out of the country under a separate testing and quarantine regime.

Japan reported 25,742 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, surpassing the 25,000-mark for the first time since Aug 26, 2021, according to a tally based on data from local governments across the country.

The highest daily figure in Japan appeared on Aug 20 last year with 25,992, about two weeks after the Tokyo Olympics ended amid the country’s worst period in the fifth wave of infections.

In the last two weeks, the daily count has surged by 50-fold.

Like Okinawa, Osaka also logged all-time high number of daily cases on Saturday,  reporting 3,692 cases.

Hiroshima registered over 1,000 cases for the first time on Saturday.

Tokyo confirmed 4,561 new cases, topping 4,000 for the second consecutive day, while what appeared to be the first Omicron death was reported in the country.

On Saturday, Japan marked the second anniversary since its first Covid-19 case was confirmed.

So far, the accumulative number of confirmed cases in the country has amounted to more than 1.8 million, while the death toll is over 18,000.