Hi, Joe Tomei here with another update from the JET Prefectural advisors Bilal Khan & Lily McDermott. My warmest thanks to them for allowing me to share this with the list

Relief worker helping at evacuation sites tests positive Yesterday evening, it was reported that a male public health official in his 30s dispatched from Takamatsu City (Kagawa Prefecture) in order to provide assistance with disaster response in Kuma Area, tested positive for COVID-19 upon his return to Kagawa. One of his main roles was to inspect evacuation sites and provide support and advice on preventing the spread of COVID-19 among evacuees, including being in charge of setting up partitions in order to help evacuees avoid the 3 Cs.

The official in question arrived in Kumamoto on 8 July using public transport. After arriving in Kumamoto, he used a rental car to travel to the affected areas. He visited a number of places in Kumamoto in the course of his work, including going to the Kumamoto Prefectural Government Office for an orientation, and reporting to the Hitoyoshi Health Centre for meetings. He also inspected various evacuation centres such as Hitoyoshi Daiichi JHS and the old Taragi SHS building as well as Kuma Village. In the evenings, he returned to a hotel in Kumamoto City.

Although he had no symptoms after returning to Kagawa, he was concerned that he had interacted with a large undetermined number of people, so he elected to take a PCR test as a precaution, which came back positive. It is not known when or where the official was exposed to the virus. Two close contacts, both Kagawa City officials, tested negative.

The amount of the virus detected in the official’s PCR test was determined to be small, and a second test came back negative. Kumamoto Prefecture says that it will conduct PCR tests on any working, volunteering or evacuating who is concerned they may have been exposed to the virus. It is estimated that about 400 people may have had some contact. Approximately 200 tests have already been conducted, all of which have so far been negative.

Although volunteering is being restricted to people who reside in Kumamoto Prefecture, support from health officials, government staff and disaster response experts is considered to be essential and Kumamoto Prefecture plans to continue to accept support from outside the prefecture in this capacity.

The public health official in question was confirmed to be infected in Kagawa Prefecture so this case has not been added to the total number of cases in Kumamoto Prefecture, which remains at 49.

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A note on the situation in Kanto… Over the past several weeks, concentrated testing has revealed a number of clusters in the Kanto area, particularly among so-called “host club” employees in the nightlife districts, contributing to increasingly large numbers of confirmed cases in the national capital area.

Numbers of confirmed cases have continued to increase steadily. On 9 July for instance, the number of confirmed infections in Tokyo reached the highest number since the pandemic began, higher than the previous record of 206 cases on 17 April. (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200709/k10012505871000.html)

Despite reporting that the majority of the cases are associated with nightlife and related businesses, the routes of infection remain unknown for a non-negligible proportion of confirmed cases. Cases have also emerged among people with no connection to the nightlife scene, raising the alarm of community spread. For instance, on 11 July, 17 people were infected by other family members, 9 at group meals, 7 at their workplaces, and 13 staff and children were found to be infected at kindergartens/nursery schools in Tokyo. https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20200711-OYT1T50222/

Osaka has also issued a “yellow” alert as cases have increased beyond a threshold set by the government there as well. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13543741

In comment, Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko said that the possibility of community transmission in Tokyo cannot be ruled out, but would like to continue to monitor the situation while listening to the opinions of experts. https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN7F54R6N7FUTIL021.html