Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters outside the prime minister’s office on Jan. 20. (Koichi Ueda)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Jan. 20 that the government will seek to downgrade COVID-19 to a less-severe Category 5 of the five-tier system under the infectious disease prevention law.

Kishida was speaking to reporters outside the prime minister’s office.

“To further execute ‘living-with-corona’ measures and other initiatives and return to normalcy in Japan, we have decided to gradually shift the various policy measures that we have introduced (to other measures),” he said. “We will undertake detailed consideration and fine-tuning.”

The government will start the process at a meeting of the health ministry’s subcommittee on infectious diseases scheduled for Jan. 23.

The government plans to reclassify COVID-19 this spring or later.

With the reclassification, the government also intends to revise its recommendation on mask-wearing to say wearing masks indoors is, in principle, not necessary.

The infectious disease prevention law lists infectious diseases under five categories.

It also classifies some infectious diseases, including COVID-19, under the category of “infectious diseases such as novel influenza.”

This means that, for COVID-19, officials can take measures equivalent to the ones that are taken for Category 1 or 2 infectious diseases, including tuberculosis.

If COVID-19 is downgraded to Category 5, officials will be unable to recommend that infected individuals be hospitalized to isolate them.

They will also not be able to request that COVID-19 patients or their “close contacts” refrain from going out.

The reclassification will also mean there will be no legal basis to use public money to fund hospitalizations or testing for COVID-19 patients or to provide meals to infected people recovering at their homes or other accommodations.

The government intends to gradually phase out the use of public funds for such purposes rather than stopping it all at once, as doing so could disrupt medical services.

Downgrading COVID-19 to Category 5 will also mean the disease is not covered by the Law on Special Measures against Novel Influenza.

It will also result in the closure of the government’s COVID-19 response headquarters and the government will be unable to declare a COVID-19 state of emergency or pre-emergency measures. 

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