Japanese capital's daily COVID-19 cases grow 15-fold in 1 week

Tokyo's daily COVID-19 infections grew to 1,224, increasing 15-fold in one week, the Japanese capital's metropolitan government said Saturday.

Nationally, the number of daily new cases will likely be around 7,000 on Saturday, according to Kyodo News, as some other prefectures logged record daily numbers, indicating that the country is entering a sixth wave of the pandemic with the Omicron variant continuing to spread.

The capital's daily count was 922 the previous day and just 79 a week ago, which reflected the quickly evolving pandemic situation in the country since community spread of the Omicron variant was confirmed in the capital about two weeks ago.

Tokyo's daily numbers last exceeded 1,000 in September last year.

The southern island prefecture of Okinawa confirmed 1,759 cases on Saturday, marking a record number of daily cases for the third day in a row. Meanwhile, the western prefecture of Hiroshima is expected to log over 500 cases on Saturday, marking a new record, the governor said.

Starting from Sunday, Okinawa, Hiroshima and the neighboring prefecture of Yamaguchi will enter a quasi-state of emergency which requests dining establishments to shorten business hours and refrain from serving alcohol.