February 18 According to a report by Japan’s News Agency on the 17th, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been relying on hand to count new confirmed cases and other data since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga confirmed this at a meeting on the 17th. After the incident was exposed, it triggered a heated discussion in Japanese public opinion, and many netizens left messages accusing the government of being “inefficient”.
On the 17th, at the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives of Japan, Kanako Otsuji, a member of the opposition party, asked: “How does the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare count the number of coronaviruses in the country?”
In response, Masabayashi, director of the Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan, said that after 12 o’clock every night, the staff of outsourcing companies entrusted by the Ministry of Health
Labour and Welfare will go to the official websites of Japan’s prefectures to confirm the data with the naked eye, and then manually calculate the number of new confirmed cases in the country.
Yoshihide Suga also confirmed at the meeting: “The pandemic has been collecting data by hand since the outbreak.” Zhenglin Duzhang said that other data such as the new death toll “are counted in the same way”.
After the exposure of this matter, it triggered heated public discussion in Japan.
Many netizens left messages on social networks condemning: “The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is too ‘incompetent’ to promote digital operation”, “If the government continues to fool things like this, Japan will certainly be hopeless”, “What era is it now, still calculating? Statistical errors occur frequently, which is too incompetent.
However, some netizens also expressed their understanding and left a message: “Now the medical force is insufficient, and the sudden pandemic cannot build the corresponding network environment, and it is indeed difficult to respond in time.”
