Tokyo Olympics: Japanese firms, universities join Covid-19 vaccine drive, but is it too little, too late?

Companies and universities will arrange jabs for staff and students in bid to boost the vaccination rate of a country where just 3 per cent of people have had both doses

Five mass vaccination sites are to open in Tokyo, but an expert adviser to PM Suga fears that with the Games fast approaching safety concerns will be ignored

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Published: 7:45pm, 4 Jun 2021Updated: 8:12pm, 4 Jun 2021

Stung by criticism of the slow roll-out of its coronavirus vaccination programme, the Japanese government has announced new plans for companies and universities to arrange jabs for their staff, students and faculty, while the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is planning to open five more large venues to serve as mass vaccination sites.

Official statistics indicate that nearly 11 million people in Japan have received a first dose of the vaccine, some 8.7 per cent of the 126 million population, and 3.8 million have had both jabs.

And while the government is keen to play up the fact that around 500,000 vaccinations are now being administered every day and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga insists that health authorities are on course to meet his target of 1 million inoculations a day, critics say it is still too little, too late.

Particularly for a nation that is due to host the Olympic Games in precisely seven weeks.

“I’ll admit it, I’m really worried,” said Akira Kitade, an author who lives in Tokyo. “I understand that obtaining so many vaccines and then administering them to an entire country is a huge and complicated task, but other countries seem to have done quite a lot better than Japan.

“And we are counting down the days until the Games are due to open,” he added.