Photo/Illutration A free shuttle bus connecting JR Tokyo Station and a mass vaccination center operated by the Self-Defense Forces in Tokyo’s Otemachi district on May 24 (Naoko Kawamura)

Tokyo confirmed 340 new COVID-19 cases on May 24, the first time the figure fell below 400 since April 12, according to metropolitan government officials.

The latest tally was down 79 from a week earlier and brought the daily average for the week in the capital through May 24 to 638.1, or 81.3 percent of the figure for the preceding week.

The average number of diagnostic tests conducted in Tokyo over the three days through May 23 stood at 5283.3.

No new deaths from the coronavirus were reported on May 24 in the capital.

Of the 340 cases, 92 patients were in their 20s, followed by 51 in their 30s, 49 in their 50s and 41 in their 40s. There were 43 patients aged 65 or older.

The number of serious cases in Tokyo requiring ventilators or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as an ECMO lung bypass machine, rose by seven from the previous day to 68 on May 24, the officials said.

The metropolitan government stopped releasing preliminary figures of daily new cases at 3 p.m.

Instead, it began announcing the tally as well as the number of tests conducted and deaths from the virus at 4:45 p.m. from May 24 to give a clearer picture of the infection situation in the capital and to ease the burden on officials.

The same day, Osaka Prefecture reported 216 new infections, the second consecutive day the daily count dipped below 300.

The latest figure brought the prefecture’s cumulative number of COVID-19 cases to 98,020. The death toll from the virus in the prefecture rose by 35 on May 24 to reach 2,163.

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