Japan on Monday began to simplify its coronavirus reporting system by focusing on elderly and high-risk people in a bid to reduce the administrative burden on hospitals and local health centers.
The new system will not require medical facilities to report details such as names and addresses of younger people with milder symptoms that have made up around 80% of the country's COVID-19 cases since the omicron variant drove numbers sharply higher and stretched the medical system thin.
The government will continue to oblige health facilities to report the number of people who test positive for the virus each day by age group in an attempt to monitor the spread of COVID-19.