TOKYO -- Three years after Japan detected its first case of COVID-19, the government is planning its final steps out of crisis mode.
The coronavirus has infected over 32 million people in Japan and killed more than 65,000. Thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths continue to be recorded daily. But Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last week that his government will downgrade the legal status of the disease to a less threatening category, saying that the country will gradually restore normalcy.
