Tokyo, 13 January, /AJMEDIA/
The Japanese government is considering shortening the current 14-day isolation period for those who have been identified as a close contact of a person infected with the Omicron COVID-19 variant, officials said Thursday.
The envisioned policy change, apparently aimed at preventing straining the medical system, comes as the incubation period of the Omicron variant is said to be shorter than the other virus variants.
“We’d like to consider responding flexibly as needed,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters in Tokyo.
According to the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, a study on people infected with the Omicron variant in Okinawa Prefecture showed that the incubation period of the variant was around three days, shorter than the around five days for the other variants.
Japan is facing a resurgence of coronavirus cases with the spread of the Omicron variant. The country’s count of reported daily coronavirus cases exceeded 13,000 on Wednesday for the first time in over four months.
