Nationwide coronavirus cases hit record high

The Yomiuri Shimbun

17:39 JST, August 18, 2022

The daily number of new cases of novel coronavirus infection exceeded 255,000 nationwide on Thursday, marking a record high for the first time in eight days, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun tally.

Tokyo logged 27,453 new cases of infection with the novel coronavirus on Thursday, down 3,794 from the same day last week and marking the third consecutive day of a week-on-week decrease.

In Osaka, however, there were 24,323 new cases reported, an increase of 2,272 from last Thursday.

As of 5 p.m., a record number of new cases were reported in the prefectures of Akita, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Mie, Nagano, Nagasaki, Niigata and Yamaguchi.