JAPAN is seeing a sharp increase in Covid-19 deaths involving people younger than 60 years as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread in the country.
The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry said the fifth wave of the pandemic saw 860 people aged 59 or younger succumbing to the coronavirus.
According to a Kyodo News report, this accounted for 20.6 per cent of the total Covid-19 deaths in the current wave that started mid-July.
The death rate involving this age group has jumped more than fivefold from the 3.8 per cent reported before early February.
The ministry said 29 people aged below 40 years died due to Covid-19 in the fifth wave, accounting for nearly half of the cumulative total fatalities of 63 in the same age group since the start of the pandemic.
Although Japan's full vaccination rate stands at over 50 per cent of the nation's population of 125 million, many of the younger generation remain unvaccinated.
Japan launched its inoculation programme in February, initially targeting health care workers and later expanded it to people aged 65 and older in April and then to others.
"The reason why severe symptoms and deaths among people in their 40s and 50s have become relatively prominent is that the vaccination (of elderly people) has progressed," said Kazuhiro Tateda, a virology professor at Toho University.
Before the start of the vaccination programme, 96.2 per cent of the 5,295 cumulative deaths reported by early February were Covid-19 patients aged 60 and above.
By age group, those in their 80s accounted for 40.8 per cent of the total fatalities.
However, between mid-July and early September, the rate of those aged 60 or above among the total deaths of 860 has dropped to 79.4 per cent.
Meanwhile, Kyodo reports that foreign matter has been found in five unused vials of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine in cities near Tokyo and Osaka.
Authorities said the vials containing the white floating matter belonged to the same lot - FF5357.
It was reported in the cities of Sagamihara and Kamakura, both in Kanagawa Prefecture, and Sakai in western Japan.
All three cities have requested Pfizer to analyse the substances.
The contaminants were discovered at three vaccination sites in Sagamihara between Saturday and Tuesday, one site in Kamakura on Sunday and one site in Sakai on Tuesday.
Authorities there said they did not use the doses containing the foreign matter but will continue to administer doses with the same lot number that were confirmed not contaminated.
Last month, the health ministry stopped the use of around 1.63 million doses of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine as a precaution after foreign substances were discovered in numerous vials.
The health ministry had said the contaminant was found in a total of 390 doses, which were scheduled to be used at eight vaccination centres in Tokyo and Saitama, Aichi, Ibaraki and Gifu prefectures.
Moderna had said that on rare occasions during manufacturing, rubber stopper material can get mixed into the vaccine solution.
Japan's health ministry had also said rubber stopper material appears to have gone into the vials during the manufacturing process.
This could also happen when bits of the vials' rubber stopper break off when needles are incorrectly inserted.