The Tokyo Metropolitan Government building (Mainichi/Makoto Ogawa)

       TOKYO -- A total of 4,512 coronavirus infections were mistakenly omitted in reports on new cases confirmed in the capital between April 2 and Oct. 2 this year, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced Oct. 29. Additionally, errors including double-reporting in 447 people's cases were also disclosed.

       When subtracting the excess cases from the unreported ones, infection numbers in Tokyo were actually 4,065 cases higher, meaning the accumulated total as of Oct. 29 is now 381,610 people.

       Infections information from medical institutions and public health centers is input to the government's HER-SYS database. When using the system, public health center employees push a button to indicate the cases have been confirmed by the public health center, and these results are then reported to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

       But according to the metropolitan government, there were numerous cases of health centers forgetting to hit confirm while under pressure to respond to patient needs amid surging infections. Some 85% of the omitted cases occurred in August, the peak of Japan's fifth wave of infections.

       As a result of the data corrections, the day with the largest infections reported is now Aug. 13, with 5,908 cases. The errors were spotted by a metropolitan government official in mid-September, when cases were lower. Around a month was spent carefully inspecting the data.

       A metropolitan government official said, "We are reflecting on the fact that we could not accurately convey the daily numbers. In the future we will follow up in detail on public health centers."

       (Japanese original by Shinji Kurokawa and Asako Takeuchi, Tokyo City News Department)

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