WORLD
Kishida instructs ministers to aim for 1 million booster shots a day
Baku, February 7, AZERTAC
Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio says he has told his ministers to quickly increase the number of coronavirus vaccine booster shots to 1 million per day, according to NHK World-Japan.
Kishida was speaking at a Lower House Budget Committee meeting on Monday after discussing the acceleration of booster jabs with his ministers.
He said he had instructed health minister Goto Shigeyuki and other relevant ministers to achieve the target at the earliest possible date this month.
The prime minister told the meeting that the third shots will be key in preventing the onset and severe cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Kishida urged his ministers to ask local governments to speed up the distribution of vaccination tickets and to set up more inoculation sites. Businesses will be asked to use programs to vaccinate employees at their own venues.
The prime minister also called for the promotion of booster jabs for teachers and nursery school staff as well as police officers and firefighters so they can maintain their services.
Kishida mentioned plans to vaccinate government workers as well, starting with those engaged in disaster responses.
He also wants to raise the daily number of shots at the large vaccination sites in Tokyo and Osaka run by the Self-Defense Forces to the levels of last year.
To better monitor the progress of inoculations, Kishida instructed the ministers to ask municipalities to swiftly input data for the government's Vaccination Record System.