Japan eyes new COVID vaccine chief as it seeks to speed up 3rd shots
The envisaged move to replace current vaccination minister Noriko Horiuchi comes as the government seeks to accelerate provision of COVID-19 booster shots in the face of criticism from opposition parties and the public that progress has been slow.
Daishiro Yamagiwa, in his capacity as economic revitalization minister, has been praised for his handling of implementation of quasi-state of emergency measures against the virus, including his interactions with heads of local governments and the way he has answered questions in parliament.
Horiuchi, by contrast, has faced flak over her responses to questions during parliamentary sessions.
A member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party faction led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, she replaced Taro Kono as vaccine czar last year, while also becoming minister for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics held last summer.
The latter post is due to be abolished in late March.
The move to have Yamagiwa succeed her as vaccine chief will coincide with the end of her term as Olympic minister, likely leaving her out of the Cabinet, according to the sources.
Some members of the government have also considered Shigeyuki Goto, minister of health, labor and welfare, as a candidate to double up with vaccination promotion duties, but there are concerns over the potential extra workload on him, according to the sources.
Currently, there are 20 Cabinet posts under the Kishida government.
The Cabinet Law caps the number of Cabinet ministers at 17, but allows the appointment of a minister in charge of Olympics, reconstruction, as well as the world exposition, for a certain period.
A source said with the vaccination efforts still halfway through in late March, the post of vaccination minister as overall coordinator is a crucial appointment.
In early February, Kishida pledged to expedite the country's inoculation drive to administer 1 million booster shots per day in the latter half of the month, in a bid to stem infections driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
At the time, the government said only 5.9 percent of Japan's population of 125 million, or about 7.47 million people, have received a third shot since the beginning of December. As of Tuesday, the figure had increased to 15.3 percent, according to the government.
The percentage is much lower than in Britain, France and Germany, where over 50 percent of the population has had a booster shot.
A Kyodo News telephone survey on 1,054 eligible voters, released over the weekend, showed that 73.5 percent think progress in the government's booster shot program is slow.
