There Is No ‘Back to Normal’ After Covid

There Is No ‘Back to Normal’ After Covid

International and Arab News

Japanese virologist Hitoshi Oshitani has an impressive record fighting pandemics. As one of the leading experts advising the government during Covid, he helped formulate a strategy that has kept deaths in the country with the world’s oldest population lower than any other developed nation, without resorting to lockdowns. Now, as the world clamors for Japan to reopen its borders, he’s urging caution. Perhaps it’s time to listen.

“I don’t like the notion of ‘back to normal,’” Oshitani, a professor of virology at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, said in an interview in his Tokyo office. “That means going back to the pre-pandemic society. That pre-pandemic society is very, very fragile — for many risks, not just infectious disease.”

As one of the first major countries to try living with the virus, Japan offers lessons not just to Covid-zero China but to the rest of the world, as cases again rise from Singapore to the UK. Oshitani’s approach has helped keep Covid deaths in Japan lower than in Taiwan or New Zealand, where officials tried to eliminate the spread entirely.

Oshitani acknowledges tourism needs to resume in some form, but warns that the country isn’t out of the woods.