At present, the Omicron epidemic continues to expand in various countries. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on the Fuji TV program on the 9th that a formal decision will be made shortly on whether to continue to maintain the current border control measures; because of the high contagiousness of Omicron, it currently has not been fully clarified yet and should be treated with caution.
Japan’s implementation of border control measures began on November 30 last year when a new variant of Omicron was discovered in Japan for the first time. The implementation period lasted for a month. On December 21 last year, Kishida said that this measure tends to continue to be implemented, and that it will be officially decided whether the measure will continue to be implemented after the holiday period from January 8 to 10.
With the Omicron variant raging, the UK has set off another wave of confirmed diagnoses. The official report on the 8th shewed that the number of deaths from the disease exceeded the 150,000 mark, prompting Prime Minister Johnson to once again call on the public to be vaccinated. The British Education Secretary said that reducing the number of quarantine days for people diagnosed with COVID-19 from 7 days to 5 days will help British employers who are suffering from labor shortages. It is also hoped that the United Kingdom will be one of the first countries to coexist with the virus, no matter if the epidemic will continue for 5 or 10 years.
Australia’s New South Wales and Victoria states reported about 55,000 new cases today, bringing the nation’s total to about 1.03 million since the first cases were reported nearly two years ago. Other Australian states and territories will report their case numbers later today. Australia, which had managed to control the number of cases in the early days of the epidemic through strong blockades and strict border control measures, has now recorded a record number of infected people in the past few days. However, with the improvement of vaccine coverage, the country has begun to coexist with the virus. Relevant authorities have shortened the mandatory isolation time for close contacts and adjusted the definition of close contact, but are still reviewing the regulations on workers’ work reduction and rest to avoid further gaps in the supply chain.
