Go To Travel Japan’s review is too little, too late, infectious disease experts say

Infectious disease experts weighed the government’s decision on Saturday to review its Go To Travel tourism promotion campaign, criticizing the move as too late and likely to have little effect in preventing the further spread of COVID-19.

“The review came late. It should have been conducted at least two weeks ago, ”said Yoshito Niki, a visiting professor of infectious diseases at Showa University on Saturday.

“At the moment, Hokkaido and Tokyo are in phase 3 of situations where infected people are on the rise,” Niki said, referring to the second worst level on Japan’s four-level scale for measuring the spread of the deadly virus.

As part of the review, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Saturday that the government has decided to suspend new travel bookings under the Go To Travel program in areas where infections are on the rise.

About 40 million people used the Go-To-Travel program between July 22 and October 31, according to the travel agency.

Suga and Cabinet members had gathered to discuss the effort, which had boosted the local economy with subsidies provided on travel and meals. The country’s virus task force had previously recommended that the government consider revising the program, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said Friday.

“We must act as quickly as possible,” Suga told reporters, adding that he had instructed the relevant ministers to take measures on virus infections.

The prime minister said he suggested that no new reservations should be accepted as part of the campaign and asked local governments to stop issuing new Go To Eat food stamps.

The government will finalize details in the coming days on how to partially suspend the campaign designed to stimulate internal travel, the economy minister said.

“We will establish a direction within a few days, and then we will act in coordination” with the municipal governments, Nishimura said on a Sunday talk show on public broadcaster NHK. “We can’t afford to wait a week or two.”

The lack of details on what the review will entail has unnerved some experts.

“It is not clear which regions the government considers the areas where infections are expanding,” Niki said. “The measure will have little effect unless travel from these areas is also stopped.”

Perhaps most pressing, Niki said, was the apparent lack of a sense of urgency among the population as coronavirus case numbers hit records in several prefectures, including Tokyo, Osaka, Hyogo and Saitama.

“I can’t recognize a sense of crisis in our society considering the movements of people on this first day of a three-day weekend,” he said.

“Go To Travel should be completely stopped until the current third wave (of coronavirus infections) peaks,” Niki said. “The government should immediately initiate effective measures to slow the spread of infections and deliver a strong message to the public.”

Erisa Sugawara, an infection control professor at Tokyo Healthcare University, said that “the government appears to tolerate travel from areas where the virus is raging to regions with relatively few cases of infection.”

According to Sugawara, the government should have considered stopping travel across prefectural borders for the time being.

“A more drastic overhaul should have been done,” he said.

As of Saturday, Japan had 313 seriously ill COVID-19 patients across the country, according to the health ministry. The number is still lower than the peak of 328 recorded on April 30 in the middle of the first wave.

“We need to rate success in keeping the number of seriously ill patients relatively low,” he said. “But when winter comes, the air temperature and humidity drop, making it easier to catch the new coronavirus.”

Sugawara said Japan can predict that if virus carriers increase, patients with severe symptoms will also start to increase a little later.

“The government should now take measures to restrict people’s movements,” he added.