The daily numbers of new COVID-19 cases in Japan are rising again.

The issue of striking a good balance between containing new coronavirus outbreaks and maintaining acceptable levels of social and economic activities is likely to resurface repeatedly in the coming months.

But parties have been less than eager to discuss responses to the outbreaks in their campaigns for the July 10 Upper House election. They seem to think they cannot win many votes by addressing this issue since the public interest in the pandemic has waned.

One important issue is how to evaluate Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s proposal to set up an infectious disease crisis management agency within the Cabinet Secretariat.

It makes sense for the government to seek integrated policy responses to such public health crises under strong leadership. But there is already a special government task force for dealing with the pandemic headed by the prime minister.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the questions of how the powers and responsibilities should be divided between the national government and the local administration and how to ensure effective cooperation between policymakers and experts.

But no political party is making a serious effort to find answers to these questions.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan has proposed revising the law to enhance the government’s ability to serve as the command center to deal with pandemics. But details of the proposal remain unclear.

The “Japanese version of the CDC” has become a buzzword among politicians, but it is used to mean various things.

The government uses the term for the envisioned new expert organization to be created through the merger of two national medical research institutions and modeled on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Komeito, the junior partner of the Liberal Democratic Party in the ruling coalition, is championing the idea of establishing a command center for providing information and promoting effective countermeasures against outbreaks of infectious diseases.

The party refers to this proposed center as the Japanese CDC. The Democratic Party for the People also argues that the CDC should serve such functions.

Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party), which is responsible for the health care system crisis in Osaka, its home turf, has called for creating two such organizations--one in the Tokyo metropolitan area and another in the Kansai region around Osaka. But its vision remains vague.

While the term “CDC” is being bandied about like a mantra for containing COVID-19 outbreaks, the Japanese Communist Party is stressing the importance of boosting budgets for public health centers and research institutes.

The voting day is approaching while differences in the proposals and policies of parties remain unclear concerning many points.

Another key issue that deserves to be debated with greater vigor and urgency is whether to change the status of COVID-19 under the infectious disease prevention law.

The law classifies infectious diseases into five categories, Types I through V, based upon their infectiousness and the seriousness of their symptoms. Currently, COVID-19 is categorized as a Type II infectious disease, which requires tracking all cases and a certain period of isolation for close contacts.

The government is reluctant to reclassify COVID-19 to a lower category, but Nippon Ishin’s campaign promises include downgrading the disease to Type V, along with the seasonal flu. But the opposition party says treatments and vaccine shots for COVID-19 should remain available for free, unlike the case with influenza.

What is needed is specific and science-based debate on possible consequences of taking the steps and policy responses that might be necessary. But the challenge has only been debated from the simple viewpoint of whether COVID-19 should be recategorized as a Type V infectious disease under the myopic election strategies of the parties.

To ensure more effective responses to the pandemic in the future, it is vital to scrutinize and evaluate rigorously the policy measures that have been taken in the past two and a half years. One key question is whether the massive subsidies and grants that have been doled out have proven effective.

But the expert panel set up by the government for that purpose was disbanded only after scratching the surface.

The CDP has proposed setting up a fact-finding committee within the Diet. The legislature, which is responsible for monitoring and checking the decisions and actions of the administrative branch, has a duty to embark on a nonpartisan mission to tackle this task.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 7