68% Of Japanese Still Wear Masks As COVID Rules Are Eased

Days after Japan's government eased the guidelines for mask-wearing, a Mainichi Shimbun poll on March 18 and 19 found over two-thirds of respondents are continuing to wear masks, Nanae Ito reported for Mainichi Japan.

Photo Insert: While the new rules allow people to choose whether or not to wear masks indoors or outdoors, it seems many people have chosen to keep them on.

In the nationwide poll, 68% replied that they have continued to wear masks, while 30% said the number of situations in which they remove their masks has increased and 2% answered that they never wore masks, to begin with.

Whether due to different phrasing of the questions, the results differ from a poll in February in which 49% said they wanted to take off their masks more often, higher than the 44% who responded that they wanted to continue to wear masks.

While the new rules allow people to choose whether or not to wear masks indoors or outdoors, it seems many people have chosen to keep them on.

In the poll, the Kishida administration's handling of the coronavirus situation was approved by 34%, up 6 percentage points from the previous poll, while those who disapproved dropped from 48% to 43%.

Thirty-eight percent of respondents back the government's plan to increase the public burden to fund greater measures to tackle the country's declining birth rate, lower than the 46% who oppose.

Among men, 45% support and 44% oppose the plan, while among women, 50% are against it, well over the 27% who agree. Kishida has pledged to double the country's future childcare budget as part of extraordinary measures to kickstart the birth rate but has not indicated how these will be funded.

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