Five million people live on Hokkaido, north of Japan. They went into a lockdown early on Feb 28th. By March 19th Hokkaido looked like a success and was showing the world how to manage Coronavirus (they started early, and used masks). But then they reopened too soon, when there were still a few cases around and within a month had to lockdown again.
UPDATE: From readers in Japan (or who know people there) we hear that this is voluntary self-isolation, the government can declare “A State of Emergency” but the people are asked to comply, not forced. The Japanese government cannot order the population to “lock” down. Presumably “restrictions” are therefore “recommendations”.
The restrictions were released just before a three day holiday weekend and the border with the rest of Japan was not closed, which meant workers and students returned quickly and brought infections in. Three weeks later on April 14th Hokkaido closed down again.
The lag is diabolical. Most of the cases in Hokkaido were reported after the second State of Emergency was declared.
h/t David E.
…
As long as the borders are open, the lockdown cannot succeed until the whole country is cleared.
As long as there are cases circulating, a second wave is likely.
States that don’t close borders are not serious.
This Japanese Island Lifted Its Coronavirus Lockdown Too Soon and Became a Warning to the World
By Abigail Lenard, Time Magazine
A doctor who helped coordinate the government response says he wishes they’d done things differently. “Now I regret it, we should not have lifted the first state of emergency,” Dr. Kiyoshi Nagase, chairman of the Hokkaido Medical Association, tells TIME.
The announcement lifting restrictions came just before a three-day weekend; Hokkaido residents spilled onto streets and lingered in cafes, celebrating the conclusion of their weeks-long confinement. That likely kicked off the second wave of infections, says Nagase.
Further fueling it, people from other parts of Japan saw that Hokkaido had relaxed restrictions and began travelling there. Some were university students in big cities, who returned home to Hokkaido when classes were cancelled in April, says Nagase. Others were employees of large companies that typically start new job rotations at that time of year; when the state of emergency was lifted, businesses sent a fresh crop of workers from Tokyo and Osaka to Hokkaido.
On April 14, Hokkaido was forced to announce a state of emergency for a second time.
Businesses are now preparing for the long haul. Tetsuya Fujiawara, CEO of Smile Sol, a group of ten pub restaurants in Hokkaido, says even though sales are down 60%, he’d rather a strong, consistent lockdown than “lukewarm measures” that would only perpetuate the cycle of restrictions being lifted and then reinstated as infections resurge.
REFERENCES
Japan: https://www.managementdo.com/2020/03/19/new-coronavirus-update-how-to-tackle-japanese-case/
Official data: http://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/hf/kth/kak/hasseijoukyou.htm
Graphs: https://stopcovid19.hokkaido.dev/en/