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Elementary school students walk toward their school in Tokyo, Japan - Reuters
Tokyo (Reuters): Angry Japanese parents joined bewildered teachers and businesses on Friday in a rush to find new ways to live and work for a month after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s shock call for all schools to close in a bid to stop coronavirus spreading.
Abe’s unprecedented move late on Thursday to ask local authorities to shut schools means students will be out of school from Monday at least until the new academic year starts in early April.
The government earlier this week urged that big gatherings and sports events be scrapped or curtailed for two weeks to contain the virus but pledged the 2020 Summer Olympics would go ahead in Tokyo.
By Friday, infections in Japan topped 200, with four deaths, excluding more than 700 cases and four more deaths on the quarantined cruise liner Diamond Princess docked in the port of Yokohama.
While the virus has hit China hardest so far, causing nearly 80,000 infections and almost 2,800 deaths, officials say, its rapid spread globally in the past week has stoked fresh alarm.
Abe’s move - issued as a formal request rather than an order - drew scathing criticism, with health officials left scratching their heads and analysts said the plan was politically motivated and made little sense. The prime minister is expected to comment on the plan in a news conference on Saturday, media said.
“We’ll just have to get our revenge at the next elections,” @Ayu49Sweetfish tweeted, as working parents with young children were left wondering what to do for the duration.
In the northern Hokkaido prefecture, which has seen the largest number of coronavirus cases in Japan, the governor had already announced a closure of all schools until March 4. That left one hospital closing doors to patients without reservations on Friday because about a fifth of its nurses were unable to work while their children were out of school.
“We don’t know how this could be extended further,” an official at the facility, JA Hokkaido Koseiren Obihiro Kosei Hospital, told Reuters.
As the coronavirus spreads, more companies like Mitsubishi Corp (8058.T) have said they would allow workers to telecommute. But a survey in the Nikkei business daily published on Friday, conducted before Abe’s announcement, showed only half of major firms were telling all or some employees to work at home.
As the government faced questions on how businesses would cope with a March shutdown of schools, Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Honda Motor Co (7267.T) said they were still discussing how their factories would deal with school closures.
Hitachi Ltd (6501.T) said it would let workers with children in school - or about 10,000 employees - work at home in March, while Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea will be closed from Saturday through March 15.
“We will continue to urge public services and private companies to make it easier for people to take time off,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference, without disclosing further details. Finance Minister Taro Aso said financial support for families was under review.
