Apr 23, 2020 (soranews24.com) - No social distancing at parks, shops and tourist sites on a Sunny Sunday.
For a while, coronavirus cases in Japan were surprisingly low compared to a number of other countries around the world. However, with very few tests being conducted, pundits wondered if the true numbers might be higher and people had been lulled into a false sense of complacency at a time when cities around the world were shutting down.
Now, infections are rising at an alarming rate and unknown routes of transmission in new cases have been as high as 70 percent, prompting the Japanese government to issue a nationwide state of emergency. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly asserted that a lockdown like the ones seen in London and New York is not possible here, due to civil liberties protected by the Constitution, and can only ask that people stay home and avoid non-urgent, non-essential outings to help save lives.
At a recent press conference, Abe said: “Person-to-person interactions must be reduced by 80 percent, or at least 70 percent, in order to end the emergency declaration in a monthâ€. Judging from scenes on the weekend, however, the emergency declaration may well need to be extended because people appear to have missed the memo to stay home.
At Enoshima, a popular beachside destination in Tokyo’s neighbouring Kanagawa Prefecture, people were sightseeing in such great numbers on Sunday that there were traffic jams on the roads.
