The “decisive” three-week period for bringing the COVID-19 situation under control ended, and the government has admitted defeat.

“Unfortunately, there has been no declining trend” in new infections, Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economic revitalization minister who is also the government’s point man in dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic, said on Dec. 16, the end of that three-week period.

Government officials had said the period would be critical for halting the spread in novel coronavirus infections, and they deployed a concentrated package of measures. But the numbers around Japan have kept rising.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Dec. 16: “We implemented various measures, but there were more than 3,000 new patients over the past weekend. The number continues to remain at a high level. We must seriously accept that situation.”

The numbers, in fact, show that the virus is reaching even wider parts of the nation.

In the week just before the “decisive” period, the daily average of new COVID-19 cases nationwide was 2,072. But in the last week of the period, the number had risen to 2,587.

The average number of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms increased by 1.8-fold from 308 for the week before the period to 570 in the final week of the period.

A total of 687 people died of COVID-19 in the three-week period.

Medical experts were scathing in their criticism of the government’s measures.

“Over the past three weeks, there is not a single piece of data that shows the situation moving in a positive direction,” said Yoshihiro Yamaguchi, head of the Trauma and Critical Care Center of Kyorin University Hospital in Tokyo.

Yamaguchi is involved with the Tokyo metropolitan government’s preparations to secure hospital beds for those with severe symptoms.

He said that for all the talk about a decisive three-week period, the central government did not implement very strong measures.

Takaji Wakita, the head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases who chairs the health ministry’s advisory panel, repeated long-held concerns that the health care system could collapse in the pandemic.

“Unless we emerge from the current situation, there is the worry that it will become difficult to treat COVID-19 cases while also continuing with normal medical care,” Wakita said.

He said a primary concern is that the increase in the ratio of new patients aged 60 or older could lead to greater numbers of patients with severe symptoms and more deaths.

Medical experts had raised red flags throughout the three-week period. But government officials, beginning with Suga, were slow in deciding to suspend the Go To Travel tourism promotion campaign.

Suga finally announced on Dec. 14 that the campaign would be suspended nationwide. But instead of immediately halting the program, he set the suspension period for between Dec. 28 and Jan. 11.

Takayuki Onai, a political science professor at Ryutsu Keizai University in Ibaraki Prefecture, said, “I cannot help but feel the government was not very serious about controlling new infections.”

He said the government should have implemented measures that would have allowed for economic activity to continue while also serving to prevent a further spread of infections.

He mentioned subsidies to help businesses repair ventilation systems and measures to support more employees working from home.

Opposition party members were also highly critical of the government’s efforts.

One Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker described the three-week period as “a total defeat” for the government.

The health ministry advisory panel said unless greater efforts are made to bring new infections in major urban areas under control, it will be difficult to prevent the virus from spreading to other regions.

According to documents compiled by the panel, the nine prefectures of Hokkaido, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi, Kyoto, Osaka and Hyogo accounted for 75 percent of all new cases in Japan for the one-week period until Dec. 15.

Those areas all have densely populated urban centers.

The so-called effective reproduction number, which shows how many people a COVID-19 patient has infected, was still above one in many areas, meaning infections were spreading there.

According to the panel, as of Nov. 29, the number was 1.15 in the Tohoku region, 1.04 in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, 1.03 in the Chukyo region centered on Nagoya, 0.99 in the Kansai region, 1.22 in northern Kyushu, and 0.82 in Okinawa Prefecture.

Hokkaido had a figure of 0.85, meaning that new infections were spreading at a slower pace on the main northern island, the panel said.

(This article was compiled from reports by Naoyuki Himeno, Naoki Kikuchi, Yuko Matsuura, Ayako Tsukidate, Akiyoshi Abe, Tokiko Tsuji, a senior staff writer, Junya Sakamoto and Yuichi Nobira.)