Aug 08, 2020 (CNN) - Ayumi Sato is trying to be careful. But she's had enough. Lockdown fatigue is setting in for Sato, a 34-year-old stock trader who lives in Tokyo, and she's not alone.
There's a tinge of defiance throughout the Japanese capital, where many feel their leaders have only done the bare minimum to stop the novel coronavirus pandemic. "Yes, we should listen to the government," Sato said. "But we all have our own situations, we cannot always swallow whatever the government says. We cannot survive without working, we cannot stop going out altogether." This increasing sense of dissatisfaction with the government's response to the virus comes as Japan appears to be on the brink of another major Covid-19 outbreak. For the past 12 days, the Health Ministry has recorded more than 900 daily infections and Friday marked a new daily high of 1,601 new cases nationwide. To date, the country has confirmed more than 46,000 cases since the pandemic began, more than half of which have been identified since July. At least 1,062 people have died. Many of those cases are in Tokyo, the world's most populous city, where fears persist that an untraceable outbreak could quickly spiral out of control. For most of May and June, Tokyo managed to contain the number of new cases to fewer than 100 each day. But cases have steadily increased since then, hitting a single-day high of 472 new infections on August 1. To date, more than 15,000 cases of Covid-19 have been identified in the Japanese capital.
Authorities in Tokyo are convinced that many of the city's infections are happening when people go out at night, so they have requested restaurants and bars that serve alcohol to close at 10 p.m. to mitigate the risk of contracting the virus indoors.
The government has also made a substantial financial commitment to battling the virus' impact on people's livelihoods, pumping more than $2 trillion into the economy to help stave off a collapse.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday he would not call for a state of emergency despite the fact that more infections are being identified now than during the first state of emergency in April, which lasted for nearly seven weeks.
