Photo/Illutration A large screen display shows a graduate’s face without a face mask during a graduation ceremony at a junior high school in Tokyo on March 19. (Keiichiro Inoue)

Tokyo confirmed 303 new COVID-19 cases on March 19, down one from the 304 cases reported a week ago, according to metropolitan government officials.

The latest tally brought the capital’s daily average for the week through March 19 to 297 cases, or 108.6 percent of the figure for the preceding week.

The metropolitan government has set a weekly goal of reducing the average to 70 percent of the previous week, but the figure is currently on an upward trajectory.

The number of serious cases in Tokyo requiring ventilators or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as an ECMO lung bypass machine, rose by two from the previous day to 46 on March 19, the officials said.

Of the 303 cases, 67 patients are in their 20s, followed by 49 in their 30s and 38 each in their 40s and 50s. There are 60 patients aged 65 or older.

The metropolitan government aims to ease the burden placed 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 will be lifted.

To achieve that target, the capital will need 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 18, logging 255 serious cases. But it still fell short of the other two, with 2,831 patients recuperating at hospitals and elsewhere, and 1,293 hospitalized as of March 18.

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