Japan enacts law to provide free COVID-19 vaccines to all

TOKYO: Japan's parliament on Wednesday enacted a law to cover the costs for citizens to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, as hopes grow for the early arrival of vaccines following recent reports of progress amid a resurgence of infections.

The House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the parliament, unanimously passed a bill to revise the current vaccination law after Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged to secure coronavirus vaccines for all the roughly 126 million residents of the country in the first half of next year.

Japan has agreed with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., American firm Moderna Inc. and Britain's AstraZeneca Plc to receive sufficient vaccines for 145 million people when they are successfully developed, earmarking a budget of 671.4 billion yen ($6.4 billion) for that purpose.

The revised law does not clarify whether the scheme will include foreign residents of Japan, but health ministry officials have said they expect them to be covered based on other vaccinations offered for free.

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The government needs to collect information on the efficacy and safety of vaccines under development as some of them employ artificial genes and other technologies that have yet to be used outside of a laboratory setting.

Although the revised law strongly recommends that people get inoculated, the government will allow individuals to refuse if the efficacy and safety of vaccines has not been proved sufficiently at the time of approval.

In the event that vaccination causes serious side effects, the revised law states the government will cover medical expenses and disability pensions as part of relief measures and shoulder damages on behalf of the vaccine suppliers.

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