On Wednesday, Japan’s health ministry projected that 400,000 people could die in the Asian country, without any social distancing measures in place.
The team of experts from Japan’s health ministry used the forecast to show how important it is to take measures to reduce social contact among citizens. Hiroshi Nishiura, a professor at Hokkaido University professor and an infectious disease expert on Japan’s coronavirus task force, said that the projection is a worst-case scenario, but the country could reach this number if no precautions are taken.
“We don’t expect 400,000 or so people to die. We can stop the spread of this infectious disease if we drastically reduce contact between people,” Nishiura said, according to the Japan Times.
The task force also estimated that the number of people that become severely ill and need ventilators could reach 850,000 in Japan.
The estimate comes just a few days after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency in the country and asked citizens to decrease social interaction by “at least 70 percent.” There has yet to be a nationwide lockdown implemented in Japan, but the emergency declaration urges residents to stay at home as much as possible and to only leave for essential matters.
“Social interactions must be reduced by 80 percent, or at least 70 percent, in order to end the emergency declaration in a month,” Abe said on Saturday, according to the Japan Times. “To achieve this, people’s further cooperation is needed.”
“The decrease in commuters has not been sufficient,” Abe added, referring to cities like Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Osaka, Hyogo and Fukuoka, which have shown to be the country’s hotspots for the virus.
“Office work should be done from home in principle, and if commuting is necessary, businesses should reduce the number of commuters by at least 70 percent,” he said.
While Japanese residents have been asked to drastically reduce their social interaction, on Wednesday, a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, Takashi Takai, was expelled from his position after he admitted that he violated the country’s state of emergency orders and went to a bar in Tokyo.
The novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, originated in Wuhan, China, but has continued to spread across the world, infecting over two million people and causing at least 128,071 deaths, according to a tracker provided by Johns Hopkins University.
In Japan, the virus has infected over 8,000 people has caused at least 146 deaths.
