TOKYO -- Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike on Wednesday urged younger people to cooperate with measures to bring down the high number of infections and get vaccinated, saying their activities are key to slowing the surge during the Olympics.
On Tuesday, the Japanese capital reported 2,848 new cases, exceeding its previous record in January.
Koike noted that the majority of the elderly have been fully vaccinated and infections among them have largely decreased, while the mostly unvaccinated younger people are now dominating the new cases.
"Younger people's activity holds the key [to slowing the infections], and we need your cooperation," Koike said. "Please make sure to avoid nonessential outings and observe basic anti-infection measures, and I would like younger people to get vaccinated."
As of Tuesday, 25.5% of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated. The percentage of the elderly who are fully vaccinated is 68.2%, or 36 million people.
Vaccination prospects for younger people have improved, and some can get their shots organized by work places and colleges, while others still wait based on seniority. But there are also concerns over hesitancy among the young, with surveys showing many of them having doubts, in part because of false rumors about side effects.
Younger people have been blamed for roaming downtown areas after the requested closing hours for eateries and stores, and spreading the virus. Tokyo is under its fourth state of emergency, which is to continue through the Olympics, but it mainly focuses on requiring establishments to stop serving alcohol and shorten their hours. Measures for the public are only requests, and they are increasingly ignored.
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Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has also urged people to avoid nonessential outings but says there is no need to consider a suspension of the Games, which are held with no fans in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures -- Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama.
Governors of the three areas, alarmed by Tokyo's surging cases, said Wednesday that they plan to jointly ask Suga to place their prefectures under the state of emergency too.
In the U.K., fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. and much of Europe will be able to enter Britain without quarantining starting next week, officials said Wednesday -- a move welcomed by the country's ailing travel industry.
The British government said people who have received both doses of a vaccine approved by the FDA in the U.S. or by the European Medicines Agency, which regulates drugs for the European Union and several other countries, will be able to take pre- and post-arrival coronavirus tests instead of self-isolating for 10 days after entering England.
The rule change takes effect at 4 a.m. U.K. time Monday.
The Scottish government, which sets its own health policy, made the same decision. Wales said it would also adopt the change -- though its Labor Party-led government said it regretted the Conservative London government's decision.
"However, as we share an open border with England, it would be ineffective to introduce separate arrangements for Wales," it said.
Northern Ireland, which is also part of the U.K., hasn't announced what it plans to do yet.
Only people who have been vaccinated in Britain can currently skip 10 days of quarantine when arriving from most of Europe or North America.
There is one exception to the rule change: France, which the U.K. has dubbed a higher risk because of the presence of the beta variant. Visitors from France will continue to face quarantine.
Heathrow Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye and British Airways welcomed the move, but urged the government to go further and ease restrictions on visitors from more countries.
Claire Walker, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the announcement was "welcome news."
"The long-term recovery of our entire economy also depends on reopening the U.K. to the two-way flows of people and trade," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless of The Associated Press.
