Health minister Katsunobu Kato on Tuesday gave a warning about a measles outbreak after two patients were confirmed to have the virus in Tokyo, the first such cases in the capital since 2020.
Measles "is extremely infectious, and those who don't have immunity to the disease will get it almost 100%," Kato said at a news conference.
According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the patients — a woman in her 30s and a man in his 40s — traveled from Shin-Kobe Station to Tokyo Station on the Nozomi No. 50 train on the Sanyo and Tokaido Shinkansen lines on April 23.
They traveled in the No. 9 car, where a man from Ibaraki Prefecture who had been abroad and has earlier been confirmed to have measles rode. The Tokyo patients' infection was confirmed on May 3 after they developed fever and coughing. The man in his 40 also took the Kodama No. 740 train on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line on May 4.
The health minister urged people with no history of vaccination against measles to consider getting inoculated.
"We urge people who had contact with those cases to refrain from using public transportation and follow directions given by hospitals," he said.