Kirk here with some COVID-19 news. The situation is not good. Kumamoto is part of the natioinal post-vacation spike in new infections. The prefectures in red all set new records yesterday. Kumamoto had a whopping 3,772 new infections!! On RKK, I saw a report about hospital beds filling up (about 70% full, as I recall – remaining beds may fill up quickly).
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20220720/k10013728041000.html
P.S. There are tons of articles in English but I chose this NHK article because I wanted to share the image a stole from it.