The greater Tokyo metropolitan area is the last region awaiting the end of Japan's second state of emergency, but there are strong indications that a number of COVID-19 infections have gone undetected and the pandemic isn’t subsiding as quickly as public data would suggest.
Daily infections have seen a downward trend nationwide since early January. However, low testing, miscounts to the tune of hundreds of cases, the absence in publicly released figures of tests conducted by private companies and efforts to scale back contact tracing hint at the possibility that an unknown number of cases have gone unreported due to strained resources, bureaucratic missteps and temporary policy changes.
No single fact or figure can perfectly represent the scope and severity of the outbreak, but collectively they can provide benchmarks for public officials to reference in deciding whether to tighten or loosen virus countermeasures. If the numbers are incomplete, however, the decision will likely be affected by that.