TOKYO: Japan confirmed 233,093 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, hitting a record high for the second straight day as the highly contagious BA.5 omicron subvariant is spreading rapidly across the country.

The number of severely ill patients rose by 35 from Wednesday to 346. New deaths linked to COVID-19 came to 114, topping 100 for the third straight day.

New cases hit record highs in 18 of the country’s 47 prefectures.

In Tokyo, a record 40,406 new cases were confirmed, up by 8,528 from a week before and surpassing the 40,000-mark for the first time. The previous record high was 34,995 cases logged Friday.

The week-on-week growth might include extra 5,000 to 6,000 cases stemming from a glitch in the central government’s HER-SYS system for managing data on COVID-19 patients that occurred on Tuesday, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government.

The seven-day average of new cases in Tokyo rose 66.4 pct from a week before to 31,318.1. The number of patients with severe symptoms was up by three from Wednesday at 27.

The prefectural government of Shizuoka, central Japan, said that a 3-year-old girl died after being infected with the coronavirus. She had an underlying disease of periodic fever.

JIJI Press