Kirk here with some COVID-19 stats. Today, the prefecture set a new record for new cases in a single day: 5,157 (Wednesday, August 17th). Though the current variant tends to be less lethal than previous ones, the high infection rate is leading to a spike in deaths. Today there were 11 deaths in Kumamoto and 286 nationally. To put that in perspective please look at the attached image. Japan has surpassed the current death rate per million in the U.S. and the current wave may be close to outstripping the number of deaths from the previous wave.
https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/127194?display=1 https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases