Tightrope between encouraging complacency and causing panic

AFTER weeks of insisting that the show could go on, Japan finally announced on March 24 the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics in light of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Just two weeks later, a state of emergency was declared in seven of the country's 47 prefectures, covering almost half of the population. The next day, on April 8, Japan reported a record 455 new cases. Granted, with under 5,000 reported cases and fewer than 100 deaths in total so far, the outbreak in Japan is still relatively subdued compared to many other countries. Nor should it be surprising that the situation can change so quickly, as experiences elsewhere have shown.

Nonetheless, observers might be forgiven some scepticism about this turn of events. Japan's testing for the virus has been significantly below both its own capacity and testing rates elsewhere. Critics both local and foreign have suggested that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe initially downplayed the virus threat in the hope that the Olympics could go ahead, though Mr Abe has denied this.