{"id":264016,"date":"2023-01-23T08:50:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T08:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264016"},"modified":"2023-01-24T07:43:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T07:43:42","slug":"japan-becomes-first-major-country-to-officially-recognize-covid-poses-same-threat-as-flu-in-seminal-pandemic-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264016","title":{"rendered":"Japan becomes first major country to officially recognize Covid poses same threat as flu \u2014 in seminal pandemic moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Commuters at Tokyo Station, Japan, January 20, 2023<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u00a0Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the announcement on Friday<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Category\u00a0would downgrade the disease from Class 2 to Class 5<\/li>\n<li>New approach would treat COVID-19 as a normal part of medical services rather than a medical emergency<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Britney Grimes \u2013 Daily Mail Jan 20, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Japan will start considering Covid as being equivalent to the seasonal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/health\/flu\/index.html\"><strong>flu<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 a sign of the attitude shift toward the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Friday that Covid would be reclassified to disease category five from the current level two.<\/p>\n<p>In practical terms, it ditches a recommendation to wear masks in indoor public spaces and ends the need for infected people and close contacts to self-isolate<\/p>\n<p>But symbolically, it shows how major countries are finally learning to live with Covid rather than treating it like an immediate public health emergency.<\/p>\n<p>The new classification in Japan &#8211; which will kick in in Spring &#8211; recommends patients only to wear masks indoors if symptomatic &#8211; as opposed to the general recommendation for everyone currently in place.<\/p>\n<p>Mask requirements for coronavirus were last revised in May, when the Government stopped urging people to mask-up outdoors.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike in the UK and US, masks are more culturally accepted in Asia so many Japanese continue to wear coverings both indoors and outdoors.<\/p>\n<p>As we try to restore the lifestyles of a normal Japan, we would like to shift various measures step by step,&#8217; Kishida said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;In order to return to our ordinary daily life in Japan while pursuing measures to adapt to living with the coronavirus, we will study concrete measures to gradually move on to a next step,&#8217; he added.<\/p>\n<p>The current Class 2 disease categorization puts Covid in the same criteria as tuberculosis and SARS.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/health\/article-11658339\/Japan-officially-downgrades-Covid-seasonal-flu-status.html\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sanity returns as Covid is recognised in Japan as posing the same level of health threat as flu, which is essentially what it is: a variant of the cold\/flu virus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":264017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-Health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264019,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264016\/revisions\/264019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}