Photo/Illutration Pedestrians in Tokyo’s Ginza district remove their jackets under the warm spring sun on March 16. (Reina Kitamura)

Tokyo confirmed 409 new COVID-19 cases on March 17, the first time in about a month the daily count topped 400, according to metropolitan government officials.

The last time the capital’s daily tally exceeded the 400 mark was on Feb. 18, when officials reported 445 cases. The figure for March 17 rose by 69 from the 340 cases confirmed a week ago.

The latest tally brought the daily average for the week in the capital through March 17 to 298.9, or 112.7 percent of the figure from the week before.

The metropolitan government set a weekly goal to reduce the average to 70 percent of the previous week. But the figure is trending upward.

The number of serious cases in Tokyo requiring ventilators or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as an ECMO lung bypass machine, dropped by one from the previous day to 41 on March 17, the officials said.

Of the 409 cases, 88 patients are in their 20s, followed by 69 in their 30s and 58 in their 40s. Eighty-five patients are 65 or older.

The metropolitan government is aiming to ease the strain on the capital’s health care system by lowering the number of cases to the stage 2 level by March 21, when the current state of emergency for Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures is due to be lifted.

To achieve that target, the capital needs to reduce its total number of COVID-19 patients to 2,088, bring the number of hospitalized patients down to 1,261 and reduce the number of those who meet the central government's definition of patients in serious condition to 255.

Tokyo met the third goal on March 16, with the number of serious cases dropping to 251. But it still fell short of the other two targets, with 2,678 patients recuperating at hospitals and elsewhere and 1,268 hospitalized patients.

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