TOKYO: The smiles and screams at Tokyo Disneyland may be more obvious on Monday as the amusement park and much of Japan relaxes face mask norms that have defined the three-year COVID-19 pandemic.
Disney park operator Oriental Land Co, East Japan Railway Co. and cinema operator Toho Co. are among the major companies allowing patrons to go maskless starting Monday, based on revised government guidance announced last month.
But a rapid behavioral change is unlikely, given a long history of mask usage in Japan and a pollen onslaught that has given hay fever sufferers one of the worst spring seasons in years.
“Mask-wearing was part of our culture even before COVID-19,” said Hitoshi Oshitani, a Tohoku University professor who was an architect of Japan’s COVID-19 response. “I think many people will be wearing masks even after the rules are relaxed.”
Japan is one of the last major economies to relax official guidance on the coverings, whose usage has been nearly universal throughout the country even without firm regulations or penalties governing their use.
“Regarding masks, I think it is safer to wear one when riding public transportation to guard against contagion,” Yutaka Izawa, 60, said as he walked around the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo.
South Korea dialed back most requirements on indoor masking in January, while Singapore allowed bare faces on public transport last month. The United States and England halted most mask mandates early last year.
Hanako Kuno, 35, said overseas business trips had gotten her used to mask-free living.
“Personally, I think it’s fine to leave them off, and especially when I’m outside, I don’t see the point in wearing them,” said Kuno, who runs a human resources firm.
Japan has already eased norms on masks, allowing maskless speeches in parliament and permitting schools to decide whether to require them at commencement ceremonies this month.
Chief government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said last week that masks would no longer be required at Cabinet meetings starting Monday and that decisions on the coverings would be left up to individual workspaces.
“As of today, mask wearing is at the discretion of each individual,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told reporters on Monday. “However, hay fever is also a pretty intense this season, so I think it boils down to the fact that you can wear them for different reasons.”
Japan’s COVID-19 vaccination rate stands at more than 80 percent and cases have ebbed after an eighth wave of infections that peaked in early January.
Health experts in Japan have pointed to widespread mask use along with an embrace of hygiene and social distancing for the country’s relatively lower death toll from COVID-19.
Kyoto University professor Hiroshi Nishiura, one of the more conservative voices among Japan’s pandemic response experts, said that voluntary masking on public transport and in other spaces could have a continuing benefit in protecting against infection.
“That could have been incorporated as part of our daily habit,” he said. “The governmental decision in this time spoiled that intent.”
Mask-free Monday comes to Japan as government eases COVID-19 guidelines
https://arab.news/jnp39
Mask-free Monday comes to Japan as government eases COVID-19 guidelines
Bomb attacks on Thailand petrol stations injure 4: army
- Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks
BANGKOK: Assailants detonated bombs at nearly a dozen petrol stations in Thailand’s south early Sunday, injuring four people, the army said, the latest attacks in the insurgency-hit region.
A low-level conflict since 2004 has killed thousands of people as rebels in the Muslim-majority region bordering Malaysia battle for greater autonomy.
Several bombs exploded within a 40-minute period after midnight on Sunday, igniting 11 petrol stations across Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, an army statement said.
Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks.
“It happened almost at the same time. A group of an unknown number of men came and detonated bombs which damaged fuel pumps,” Narathiwat Governor Boonchauy Homyamyen told local media, adding that one police officer was injured in the province.
A firefighter and two petrol station employees were injured in Pattani province, the army said.
All four were admitted to hospitals, none with serious injuries, a Thai army spokesman told AFP.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters that security agencies believed the attacks were a “signal” timed with elections for local administrators taking place on Sunday, and “not aimed at insurgency.”
The army’s commander in the south, Narathip Phoynok, told reporters he ordered security measures raised to the “maximum level in all areas” including at road checkpoints and borders.
The nation’s deep south is culturally distinct from the rest of Buddhist-majority Thailand, which took control of the region more than a century ago.
The area is heavily policed by Thai security forces — the usual targets of insurgent attacks.
