The status of Covid-19 in Japan

In Japan, the peak of the second infection of Covid-19 infections has now passed. Although the current second infection is estimated to have peaked at about 1.5 times the scale of the first infection in late April, the proportion of serious cases is not so high. In the field of Covid-19 research and developments, AMED (Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development) is now supporting researches in vaccines, therapeutic reagents, and scientific analysis for Covid-19, etc. In the case of vaccines development, various methods, including inactivated vaccines, recombinant vaccines, mRNA vaccines, and DNA vaccines, were proposed for the AMED program. The selected research topics are company-oriented programs (including ID Pharma, Shionogi, AnGes, VLP Therapeutics Japan, KM Biologics, Daiichi-Sankyo, Takeda,) and academic-oriented programs (including Keio University, the University of Tokyo, Nagasaki University, Niigata University, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Kobe University, and Fujita Health University. These programs will be only supported by AMED for one year and a bit more during FY2020-2021, and more fundamental research and development is desired. (Reported by Professor Takeshi Omasa, Osaka University)