Japan began the first stage of its coronavirus vaccination campaign on Wednesday, aimed first at protecting 40,000 employees in its medical sector, five months before the scheduled opening of the Tokyo Olympics, postponed last year .
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The first injections of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, the first to be authorized in Japan last Sunday, took place Wednesday morning at a hospital in the capital.
The director of the establishment, Kazuhiro Araki, was the first to be vaccinated, under the watchful eye of the cameras.
“The vaccine plays an important role against the coronavirus. So I thought that as a manager I had to lead by example, ”Mr. Araki told reporters.
Japan plans to immediately vaccinate 40,000 front-line health professionals in the daily fight against the coronavirus on a voluntary basis.
According to local media, half of them will be asked to report any side effects or reactions to the vaccine, given as two injections three weeks apart.
The government then hopes to vaccinate all of the country’s health service personnel, or 3.7 million people, by March.
Vaccination for people 65 and over should start in April at best. The government has not yet detailed the timetable for the rest of the country’s population, which numbers 126 million.
“I would like many people to get vaccinated once we have an accurate understanding of the benefits and risks,” Taro Kono, the Japanese minister responsible for overseeing the national rollout of the vaccination, said on Tuesday.
The regulatory process for vaccine authorization in Japan has lagged behind Europe and the United States, as the country requires additional clinical studies to be conducted on its soil beforehand.
However, last year the archipelago already ordered enough vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna to eventually cover its entire population.
Closed to almost all foreign visitors since the spring of 2020, Japan has been relatively less affected by the pandemic than other regions of the world, having recorded on its territory 418,000 cases of contamination for some 7,000 deaths in the past year.
If the prospect of the Tokyo Olympics, which are to be held from July 23 to August 8, shines more spotlight on the management of the health crisis in Japan, Mr. Kono said on Tuesday “not to take into consideration” the event for the vaccination schedule in the country.