TOKYO Kyodo The Japanese government is struggling to present concrete plans to bring forward vaccine booster shots against the novel coronaviruses, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida telling parliament Wednesday that it is urgent to analyze whether or not the existing COVID 19 vaccines are effective against the Omicron variant.
We are hoping to determine the effect of the existing vaccines on the Omicron strain as soon as possible, and then show the scope and method of moving booster shots, Kishida said at a plenary session of the House of Representatives.
In his policy speech on Monday, he said that the government will shorten the current eight-month interval between the second vaccine shot and becoming eligible for a booster.
On Wednesday, Kishida defended the government's coronavirus response, but he said that it was too slow to submit a supplementary budget to support economic measures to help the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kishida brushed aside the claim by Kenta Izumi, the new leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, that the Liberal Democratic Party-led government should have heeded CDPJ's proposal to compile an extra budget, saying that the government and the ruling coalition took every measure available at the time.
The prime minister, who took office in October, pledged to revive the Japanese economy with the government's latest economic stimulus package, which will be partially funded by a supplementary budget submitted to the Diet on Monday.
Kishida said that the Japanese economy will be back on a recovery track as soon as possible and open a path toward a new society in the post-pandemic era with the massive package of 55.7 trillion yen $491 billion in fiscal spending.
Izumi, who was elected as the new CDPJ leader last week after the main opposition party lost seats in the October general election, rapped the government and the ruling coalition for ignoring a request by his party to extend the ordinary diet session and discuss a supplementary budget of 33 trillion yen in June.
Izumi had a policy meeting with the CDPJ, and Izumi had called for a debate on the extra budget proposed by the opposition party. He argued that the fifth wave of coronaviruses occurred in Japan this summer after the missed opportunity to discuss the budget.
He said that the provision of vouchers will increase the burden on local governments already preparing to carry out booster shots against COVID - 19.
Kishida said he will consider how to handle it by listening to the opinions of the local governments. After Kishida delivered his policy speech at the beginning of an extraordinary parliament session on Monday, the two verbally sparred as questioning began by party representatives at the parliament.