Next month the Olympic torch will arrive in Japan for a four-month relay to launch the opening ceremonies for the Tokyo summer games. But rather than anticipating the sight of Olympic torchbearers, much of Japan is fixated on a different relay: hundreds of masked passengers grimly walking off the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama. The ship has been home to more than 630 COVID-19 infections, the largest cluster in the world outside of Wuhan. Departing passengers all test negative for the virus before release, but public health experts fear the virus is hitching rides with individuals who only show symptoms later.

Moreover, on Sunday, Japan's Health Minister acknowledged that the government is unable to track the route of infections in the country (which total 90). Meanwhile, the Japanese public, long supportive of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is losing faith in his ability to cope with the crisis. What might have been a manageable situation is now exposing gaps in Japan's ability to respond to a public emergency.

Japan was not supposed to be in this position. Past global pandemics — such as H1N1 and SARS — emerged from developing countries with poor health-care infrastructure and limited early detection ability for new pathogens. Affluent developed countries are believed to have more or less solved these problems, or at least can afford to manage them in the event of a crisis. Indeed, a 2019 survey ranked Japan 21st out of 195 countries for its ability to prevent, detect, and respond to epidemic and pandemic threats.