A central Japan city admitted Tuesday it initially gave a pharmacy chain chief and his wife priority bookings for COVID-19 vaccinations, in a revelation likely to anger seniors struggling to make reservations amid Japan's slow vaccine rollout.
Yoshihide Kondo, the deputy mayor of Nishio in Aichi Prefecture, apologized at a press conference Tuesday for the "lack of fairness" and said the city has already canceled the reservations for Sugi Holdings Co. Chairman Hirokazu Sugiura, 70, and his 67-year-old wife Akiko.
In what would have been special treatment, Sugiura and his wife had been scheduled to receive their first shots on Monday, but the city canceled their bookings after a local newspaper made an inquiry into the matter. The Sugi drugstore chain Sugiura heads operates in many areas of the country.
Japan started inoculating people aged 65 or older on April 12, but the slow vaccine rollout has triggered confusion at many municipalities in charge of the vaccination campaign. Telephone lines and websites to make reservations have been overwhelmed with traffic, with both becoming unreachable in some cases.
According to Kondo and other city officials, Sugi Holdings made repeated requests in April for the chairman and his wife to be given priority in receiving shots. The couple live in Nishio, while the company is headquartered in Obu in Aichi Prefecture.
The Nishio city government started taking reservations last Thursday for vaccinations for elderly residents. Bookings must be made by phone or through its website or the Line messaging app.
Although a city government section in charge of inoculations rejected Sugi Holdings' requests, the deputy mayor and the top official overseeing the vaccination program eventually decided to accept them and secured access without requiring the couple to book through conventional means.
The Nishio city has a partnership accord with Sugi Holdings over efforts to improve the health of elderly residents. "As the company has supported the municipal government, I was wondering if we could return the favor some way. So we couldn't firmly reject its strong request" for a priority booking for the couple, Kondo said at the news conference.
Nishio Mayor Ken Nakamura also apologized at the same event for "severely hurting public trust."
Sugi Holdings later said in a statement it "offers a deep apology to people across Japan for causing displeasure."
Taro Kono, the minister in charge of the country's vaccination efforts, criticized the Nishio city government, saying at a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday it had made "a completely unnecessary response" to the request.
A 70-year-old woman in Nishio expressed anger over the preferential booking, saying, "It's wrong that people in a powerful position can be given priority."
Of about 36 million elderly people in Japan, only some 240,000 had received the first of two shots as of last Thursday, according to government data. Japan aims to inoculate all senior citizens by the end of July amid a fourth wave of coronavirus infections.
