THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
November 19, 2020 at 19:10 JST
Commuters wearing face masks walk on a street in Tokyo on Nov. 19. (Shiro Nishihata)
A daily record 2,340 new novel coronavirus infections were confirmed nationwide as of 6:20 p.m. on Nov. 19.
The figure broke the previous record of 2,202 reported the previous day.
Tokyo continued to see an alarming spike in new COVID-19 cases on Nov. 19 with 534, the second consecutive day the daily count marked a record high, according to metropolitan government officials.
Officials confirmed 338 new COVID-19 cases in Osaka Prefecture, 267 in Hokkaido and 219 in Aichi Prefecture, all their highest daily figures.
It was the first time for Osaka Prefecture to report more than 300 cases in a day and for Aichi Prefecture to report more than 200 cases.
Hokkaido’s daily tally included 197 in Sapporo, the capital and largest city on the northernmost main island, which was also a record high, local officials said.
Tokyo’s latest count broke the previous record of 493 set the day before, according to metropolitan government officials.
Of the 534 cases in Tokyo, 130 patients are in their 20s, followed by 110 in their 30s, 96 in their 40s and 80 in their 50s. Sixty-nine patients were 65 or older.
The number of serious cases requiring ventilators or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as an ECMO lung bypass machine, dropped by one from the previous day to 38 on Nov. 19, the Tokyo metropolitan government said.
The metropolitan government raised its alert over the pandemic to the highest level of 4 after a meeting of its expert panel monitoring the spread of infections earlier that day. Level 4 warns that infections are spreading.
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