Japan has historically had an issue with vaccine hesitancy. You wouldn’t know by looking at its COVID-19 immunization stats.
Before the world’s third-largest economy started administering shots, it had one of the lowest rates of vaccine confidence in the world. Now, the country — which started doling out immunizations months after the United States — has the highest inoculation rate among the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, and it did it without mandates of any kind.
Japan had fully inoculated 75.5% of its population of 126 million people as of Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that uses population statistics from the United Nations. The nation this week pushed ahead of Canada, which previously had the highest rate among the G7 economies, with 75.3% of its population fully vaccinated.