The department of Hiroshima (western Japan) is preparing to launch the country’s first large-scale coronavirus testing campaign in the metropolis of the same name, targeting up to 800,000 people, local authorities announced on Friday.
“We want to identify positive cases early enough to prevent the virus from spreading further,” Kazuhiro Saito, an official of the department, told AFP.
He said the tests would be administered to volunteers living or working in certain neighborhoods in the city of Hiroshima, which has a population of around 1.2 million.
Eleven Japanese departments, but not Hiroshima, are currently under a state of emergency that is to last at least until February 7, as Japan experiences its worst wave of infections since the start of the pandemic.
The numbers of infections observed in December in the city of Hiroshima “were at a level which could necessitate a state of emergency”, estimated the governor of the department Hidehiko Yuzaki, according to statements reported by the local daily Chugoku Shimbun.
Japan is sometimes criticized for its strategy of testing a limited number of people, unlike mass testing in other countries.
Japanese health experts have so far assured that targeted testing, combined with tracing contact cases, is a more effective method.
The Archipelago has been relatively spared from the pandemic compared to many other regions of the world, with some 4,100 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the past year.