Proportion of coronavirus cases on U.S. bases in Okinawa exceeds proportions in Europe and U.S.

Proportion of coronavirus cases on U.S. bases in Okinawa exceeds proportions in Europe and U.S.


January 13, 2022 Ryukyu Shimpo

By Ryota Nakamura

 

The number of people newly infected with the novel coronavirus on January 12 on U.S. military bases in Okinawa came to 295 people. According to calculations by this newspaper, when calculating the number of newly-infected people in the past week per 100,000 people, the number comes to 4,691.3 people. When comparing numerical values, this number is 7.84 times the 598.27 per 100,000 people throughout all regions of Okinawa, which is confirmed as having the most coronavirus cases domestically, 4.2 times the 1113.04 per 100,000 people in Miyakojima City, and exceeds the number of cases per 100,000 people throughout Europe and the United States, where the number of infections are explosively increasing.

[Apparent at a glance] The status of coronavirus in Okinawa

During the past week, the number of newly-infected people involved with the U.S. military in Okinawa grew to 2,219 people total, with the week’s record high being 429 people on January 9. The Okinawa Prefectural Government (OPG) announced that at the end of June 2011 the soldiers, civilians in military employ, and family members of the U.S. military stationed in Okinawa numbered 47,000 people in total. Numerical values were calculated per 100,000 people.

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Quarantine Station announced that the number per 100,000 people on the U.S. military bases in Okinawa is larger than the number per 100,000 people in countries in which there are many cases of coronavirus. In the week leading up to January 2, the country with the highest number of newly-infected people was the United States with 2,556,690 people, which comes to 772.4 per 100,000 people; second place was the United Kingdom with 1,104,316 people, which comes to 1,626.7 per 100,000 people; and third place was France with 1,093,162 people, which comes to 1,680.8 per 100,000 people. The cases among the U.S. military stationed on Okinawa per 100,000 people accounts for 2.8 times that per 100,000 people in France.

Since December 15 last year, there has been an ongoing infection outbreak among U.S. military-related personnel on Camp Hansen who have transferred to Okinawa, and the prevalence of the Omicron variant was confirmed on December 29. PCR tests were required for U.S. military-related personnel when leaving the United States; however, this requirement was lifted after September last year. It has been established that personnel can be on a military base and can be transferred between military bases if they have had two doses of the coronavirus vaccine. This is considered to be one factor contributing to the spread of the novel coronavirus.

(English translation by T&CT and Erin Jones)

 

 

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