Covid-19 Vaccination Target Ahead Of Tokyo Olympics, Government Urges Mass Vaccination Center

Ilustrasi vaksin COVID-19. (Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Secretary of Defense)

JAKARTA - The Japanese government opened a mass COVID-19 vaccination center on Monday to pursue vaccination targets for the elderly ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.

Vaccination centers in Tokyo and Osaka will vaccinate thousands of people every day, giving a boost to japan's sluggish pace as officials battle a fourth wave of infections.

"It's better to get it early. Everything went quite smoothly, overall," said Tetsuya Urano (66) one of the elderly recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine in Tokyo, reported Reuters on Monday, May 24.

Tokyo's vaccination facility will operate 12 hours a day, to deliver vaccines to 10 thousand people per day for the next three months. Meanwhile, the facility in Osaka targets about 5 thousand people every day.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called for vaccination centers to speed up vaccination services in Sakura Country. The plan is that the Local Government will open beasr-scale vaccination facilities in Aichi, Miyagi and Gunma prefectures.

For the record, a fourth wave of infections prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency in most parts of Japan, including Tokyo, raising concerns about hosting the Upcoming Japan Olympics on July 23.

The state of emergency in most areas will end on May 31, but the government plans to extend it until June 20, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Japan is becoming a large and wealthy country that is slow in the COVID-19 vaccination process, where only 4.4 percent of The Japanese population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Vaccination programs in the country were only boosted in mid-February, slower than other developed countries, due to a lack of supply of Pfizer vaccines. As vaccine shipments increase, labor insecurity and reservation system failures affect japan's COVID-19 vaccination program.

Mass vaccination centers for the elderly in Japan are using the Moderna Inc. vaccine, which was approved on Friday last week, along with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Meanwhile on Monday, Johnson &Johnson announced it has filed for regulatory approval, to be able to supply the COVID-19 vaccine in Japan starting in 2022.