Coronavirus outbreak updates: Jan. 22, 2021

As of 11 p.m., Friday, Jan. 22

• The Japanese government has started weighing the possibility of staging this summer's Tokyo Olympics without spectators to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, several officials said Friday.
• A woman in her 30s infected with the novel coronavirus committed suicide earlier this month while self-isolating at her home in Tokyo, local officials said Friday, at a time when many hospitals are overloaded with COVID-19 patients and thousands of infected Tokyoites remain on hospital waiting lists.
  
  
• The number of suicides in Japan rose 3.7 percent in 2020 from the previous year to 20,919, up for the first time in 11 years, with the number of cases involving women and young people showing a marked increase amid the coronavirus pandemic, police data showed Friday.
  
  
• President Joe Biden on Thursday beefed up the country's response to the coronavirus pandemic, requiring mask-wearing in airports and on some forms of public transport as well as quarantine for arriving international air travelers.
  
  
• Japan's core consumer prices dropped 1.0 percent in December from a year earlier, the steepest fall in over 10 years, due largely to lower energy prices and the government's travel subsidy campaign amid the coronavirus pandemic, official data showed Friday.
  
  
• The Cabinet approved Friday bills to penalize people who do not comply with antivirus measures as Japan struggles to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As of 11:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 21

• Tokyo's tally of new coronavirus infections for January topped 30,000 on Thursday, with the month already accounting for around a third of the capital's cumulative total, as Japan continues to grapple with a third wave of the pandemic.
  
  
• Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. said Thursday it has begun clinical trials in Japan of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate by U.S. biotech firm Moderna Inc. with an eye to distributing it in the first half of this year.
  
  
• The Japanese economy is expected to shrink 5.6 percent in fiscal 2020 through March, instead of 5.5 percent forecast in October, the Bank of Japan said Thursday as Japan struggles to rein in coronavirus infections under a second state of emergency.
  
  
• Japan's exports in 2020 plunged 11.1 percent from the previous year, marking the largest fall in 11 years, as the new coronavirus pandemic battered global demand for industrial products such as cars, government data showed Thursday.
•  
• International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound on Wednesday reaffirmed his belief the Tokyo Games will happen this summer despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying the Olympics can go ahead without fans in attendance.