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
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Mask-free Monday comes to Japan as government eases COVID-19 guidelines
Uganda partially restores internet after president wins 7th term
- “The internet shutdown implemented two days before the elections limited access to information, freedom of association, curtailed economic activities ... it also created suspicion and mistrust on the electoral process,” the team said in their report
KAMPALA: Ugandan authorities have partially restored internet services late after 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni won a seventh term to extend his rule into a fifth decade with a landslide victory rejected by
the opposition.
Users reported being able to reconnect to the internet and some internet service providers sent out a message to customers saying the regulator had ordered them to restore services excluding social media.
“We have restored internet so that businesses that rely on internet can resume work,” David Birungi, spokesperson for Airtel Uganda, one of the country’s biggest telecom companies said. He added that the state communications regulator had ordered that social media remain shut down.
The state-run Uganda Communications Commission said it had cut off internet to curb “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and related risks.” The opposition, however, criticized the move saying it was to cement control over the electoral process and guarantee a win for the incumbent.
The electoral body in the East African country on Saturday declared Museveni the winner of Thursday’s poll with 71.6 percent of the vote, while his rival pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine was credited with 24 percent
of the vote.
A joint report from an election observer team from the African Union and other regional blocs criticized the involvement of the military in the election and the authorities’ decision to cut
off internet.
“The internet shutdown implemented two days before the elections limited access to information, freedom of association, curtailed economic activities ... it also created suspicion and mistrust on the electoral process,” the team said in their report.
In power since 1986 and currently Africa’s third longest-ruling head of state, Museveni’s latest win means he will have been in power for nearly half a century when his new term ends in 2031.
He is widely thought to be preparing his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to take over from him. Kainerugaba is currently head of the military and has expressed presidential ambitions.
Wine, who was taking on Museveni for a second time, has rejected the results of the latest vote and alleged mass fraud during the election.
Scattered opposition protests broke out late on Saturday after results were announced, according to a witness and police.
In Magere, a suburb in Kampala’s north where Wine lives, a group of youths burned tires and erected barricades in the road prompting police to respond with tear gas.
Police spokesperson Racheal Kawala said the protests had been quashed and that arrests were made but said the number of those detained would be released later.
Wine’s whereabouts were unknown early on Sunday after he said in a post on X he had escaped a raid by the military on his home. People close to him said he remained at an undisclosed location in Uganda. Wine was briefly held under house arrest following the previous election in 2021.
Wine has said hundreds of his supporters were detained during the months leading up to the vote and that others have been tortured.
Government officials have denied those allegations and say those who have been detained have violated the law and will be put through due process.
