Photo/Illutration Health minister Norihisa Tamura speaks to reporters on March 30. (Kotaro Ebara)

The health ministry reprimanded 22 officials on March 30 for partying late into the night at an “izakaya” pub in Tokyo’s swanky Ginza district despite a government request that eateries close early.

But punishing the bureaucrats for throwing the farewell party is unlikely to end the scandal. The ministry now admits there were at least two other occasions where officials held parties that five or more people attended in late March.

The government has urged the public to refrain from dining with five or more people and asked restaurants to close early to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

After the Ginza party scandal was brought to light, the ministry investigated whether employees at the ministry and the secretariat for the Central Labor Relations Commission held any other dinner parties with five or more officials in attendance since Jan. 7, when the second state of emergency was declared.

Five officials, including a manager, who work in a division of the Employment Security Bureau that handles construction and ports, held a dinner party in late March, the ministry discovered.

Six employees who work at a day care division of the Child and Family Policy Bureau also had a party around that time, it said.

The bureaucrats held both parties after the state of emergency was lifted, and the parties ended before 9 p.m., the time that the Tokyo metropolitan government is urging eateries to close by.

The ministry sent an internal email on March 30 to all its employees, instructing them to “refrain from throwing farewell and welcome parties,” recognize their responsibilities and behave accordingly.

In the meantime, the ministry reprimanded 22 staff members from the Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly, who attended the Ginza dinner.

Kaoru Manabe, the section chief who proposed throwing the party, has been sacked from his post and shuffled into the Minister’s Secretariat. He is also having his salary cut for a month.

Health minister Norihisa Tamura will voluntarily return his salary for two months.

According to the ministry and other sources, about two-thirds of the bureau’s staff attended the farewell party, which started around 7:15 p.m. on March 24.

About 10 of them continued wining and dining until shortly before midnight.

They did not wear masks at the dinner, sources said.

The metropolitan government requested that bars and restaurants close at 9 p.m. until April 21.

Staff members purposely sought out a restaurant in Ginza that does not comply with the request and stays open until 11 p.m.

They spent the section’s kitty of money for social gatherings on the party.

Tamura apologized to the public at a news conference on March 30, but the ministry has been inundated with calls from angry citizens.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has apologized over the matter.

“I am extremely sorry,” he told reporters.

Opposition lawmakers demanded answers on the party at a Lower House committee meeting on March 31.

(This article was written by Kyosuke Yamamoto, Hiroki Koizumi and Yuichi Nobira.)

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