Coronavirus outbreak updates: Dec. 15, 2020

As of 11 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 15

• Japan's Cabinet approved a 21.84 trillion yen ($210 billion) extra budget on Tuesday, bringing its total spending for fiscal 2020 to a record high of 175.69 trillion yen, as it grapples to ensure the coronavirus-stricken economy stays on a recovery track.
  
  
• Japan's tourism ministry said Tuesday it will expand compensation for travel businesses to further help them weather the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, following the government's abrupt decision to suspend a domestic travel subsidy program nationwide amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
  
  
• A facility dedicated to coronavirus patients with serious symptoms opened Tuesday in Osaka, with the Self-Defense Forces as well as other regions of Japan sending nurses to make up for a staff shortage amid a recent spike in infections there.
  
  
• The United States on Monday began administering the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, in a much-awaited moment for the country that has suffered the world's highest numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths.

As of 11 p.m., Monday, Dec. 14

• The government will compile a 21.84 trillion yen ($210 billion) third extra budget for fiscal 2020 to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Monday.
  
  
• The Japanese government will suspend its subsidy program for promoting domestic tourism during the New Year holidays amid a surge in coronavirus cases across the country, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Monday, upending its efforts to spur an economic recovery despite the pandemic.
  
  
• The kanji for "mitsu," used repeatedly in calls to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, has been picked as the Chinese character best describing this year's social mood in Japan, a Kyoto-based academic organization said Monday.
  
  
• All Nippon Airways Co. launched a flight Monday between Japan's Narita airport near Tokyo and Shenzhen in southern China -- the first international route it has opened since March, when the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic.