The outbreak of a new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, seems to be unstoppable. On Sunday, the first known corona virus death outside of China was finally reported, in the Philippines. The death toll in China has risen to over 300 in the past two weeks.
While the number of people infected with the virus has gradually increased in Japan, it took the government three weeks to ban the entry of foreign nationals who have been in China's Hubei province in the last two weeks. It was only last Saturday that Tokyo finally introduced mandatory hospitalizations for those infected with the virus, with possible penalties for those who do not obey these instructions. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized that "Precedented measures cannot deal with unprecedented crises." As always, better late than never.
A few days before this unprecedented decision by the Abe administration to prevent an outbreak of the virus in Japan, however, it was badly defeated in its attempt to deploy the Aegis Ashore, the land-based version of the U.S. Navy's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, in Akita Prefecture.