Japan confirmed a total of 27,504,428 new COVID-19 cases in 2022, up 18.4-fold from the previous year, as highly infectious omicron variants of the virus surged throughout the country.
New deaths linked to the virus, meanwhile, totaled 39,158, up 2.6-fold.
The country reported its first case of the new coronavirus in January 2020. That year, about 230,000 infections were confirmed.
In 2021, 1.49 million people contracted the disease, as the delta variant spread nationwide.
The first of the omicron variants began to spread early in 2022. In the summer, the daily caseload hit a record high of over 260,000 during the seventh wave of infections.
Japan recorded 3,507 deaths linked to the virus in 2020 and 14,908 cases the following year. In 2022, the daily death toll began to surge in November, hitting a record high of over 400 on Tuesday.
On Saturday, Japan logged 106,412 new cases and 256 fatalities, with the daily count of new infections falling by some 71,000 from a week before.
Source : The Japan Times
