COVID cases are on the rise all over the world. The onset of winter in the northern hemisphere, the rapid spread of the new and more transmissible Omicron variant, and the stubbornness of the previous variant, Delta, have all contributed to a surge in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in many countries.
But not in Japan. In Japan, COVID has all but disappeared. And it’s mostly clear why.
“It always comes down to vaccines, to social restrictions [on] large gatherings, mask-wearing,” Dale Fisher, group chief of medicine at Singapore’s National University Health System, told The Daily Beast. “There’s no secret code that any country has discovered.”