Covid-19 in Japan: masks are no longer compulsory on public roads
Covid-19 pandemic in Japan Getty Images - Susumu Yoshioka
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In Japan, wearing a mask is no longer compulsory from this Monday outside, on public roads, when social distances can be respected there.
The mask remains indoors, and especially in public transport.
This relaxation is a first in the country since the start of the pandemic.
However, everything indicates that in the streets, the Japanese will continue to wear the mask.
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With our correspondent in Tokyo,
Bruno Duval
Japan is hit by a seventh wave of the epidemic, while nearly half of its population has still not received the booster dose of vaccine.
Despite this precarious health context, wearing a mask is now optional on public roads, which disconcerts some Tokyoites.
“
Like most young people,
I haven't yet received the third dose of the vaccine
,
” said one of them.
So even if Omicron doesn't seem to be very dangerous for people our age, it seems safer to me not to let our guard down.
A woman agrees: “
The number of contaminations is on the rise again and yet, now, can you take off your mask?
The logic escapes me
…”
“
Whatever the government says, I will continue to put on my mask all the time and everywhere, and then also to leave my house as little as possible and to avoid all contact with people who are not masked
”, explains another Japanese.
Opinion shared by his compatriot: “
This virus scares me so much that I would be absolutely unable to be relaxed in public if I took off my mask.
»
Studies show that since the start of the epidemic, more than nine out of ten Japanese people have always kept their mask on,
even though they do not risk the slightest fine if they remove it
.
Social pressure explains this discipline, in a country where one is always asked to behave irreproachably.
Even if it means, sometimes, not following the instructions of the authorities when, in general opinion, they seem unreasonable.
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Coronavirus
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Health and medicine
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