Tokyo's daily coronavirus cases top 100 for 1st time in 3 months

TOKYO, Jan. 3 Kyodo - Tokyo confirmed 103 daily coronavirus cases Monday, marking the first time in about three months that the count has surpassed 100, as concerns grow over a gradual rebound in infections in Japan with the spread of the virus's Omicron variant. The daily figure reported by the Tokyo metropolitan government was up from the 84 cases logged Sunday during the country's New Year holidays. New cases in the Japanese capital had been below 100 after 135 cases were confirmed on Oct. 8. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Monday 25 residents were newly confirmed to be infected with the highly transmissible Omicron strain, and 11 of them had no recent history of overseas travel. New infections across the country totaled 782 cases on Monday, according to a Kyodo News tally. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held a meeting on Monday with health minister Shigeyuki Goto and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno to discuss the COVID-19 situation in the country. The number of new COVID-19 infections in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan has been rising, though overall cases remain relatively small compared with the fifth wave that prompted the government to implement rounds of COVID-19 states of emergency and quasi-states of emergency in the summer of 2021. In Okinawa, the prefectural government reported 130 new cases of infections, the first time it confirmed over 100 infections since Sept. 25. There were 24 cases of the Omicron strain, it added. The local government said that 16 cases were also reported at U.S. bases in the southern island prefecture. It came after a cluster infection broke out last month at one of the bases. A prefectural official said the Omicron variant brought in by the U.S. personnel appears to be spreading to local communities. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan, said 50 people on base were confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 over the past three days. ==Kyodo