Photo/Illutration Saitama Governor Motohiro Ono calls on people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron variant by May 7. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The health ministry will cease tallying Japan’s new daily COVID-19 cases on May 8 and start collecting weekly counts from select medical institutions in a similar manner to how seasonal flu cases are tracked.

The ministry approved the change on April 27, saying the weekly report will be distributed every Friday starting on May 19, when data collected during the week to May 14 will be released.

The number of serious cases and hospital admissions will also be released on Fridays.

The move follows a downgrading from May 8 of the novel coronavirus to a Category 5, a group of less-severe infectious diseases including the seasonal flu.

After the reclassification, the ministry will receive weekly COVID-19 reports, including breakdowns by gender and age groups, from some 5,000 designated medical facilities across the country.

Such a data-collection method is called a “fixed-point” observation and has been utilized to gather statistics for seasonal influenza.

As with the seasonal flu, the number of new COVID-19 patients per health care facility will be released by prefecture.

Unlike with the flu, however, no warning or alert will be issued to advise the public to take more precautions against the novel coronavirus.

Instead, the ministry will make available comparable data collected from the fixed-point facilities since October 2022, when the country’s eighth wave of infections started.

The daily number of COVID-related deaths by prefecture will, in principle, no longer be released.

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