May 24 , 2021. 1 hour ago – 08:44 KYODO NEWS

TOKYO – Japan opened large-scale coronavirus vaccination centers on Monday in Tokyo and Osaka in a bid to accelerate the country’s inoculation program that has lagged behind other developed countries and fueled concerns about the plan to hold the Olympics in the capital in two months.

The centers, run by the Self-Defense Forces, will operate for three months from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. including weekends and national holidays. They will use the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. of the United States, which was approved by the government on Friday.

Japan hopes the mass venues, aiming to inoculate up to 10,000 people a day in Tokyo and 5,000 in Osaka, will help meet its target to complete vaccinations by the end of July of people aged 65, along with those turning 65 in the current fiscal year, or older. The Tokyo Olympics will open July 23.

The elderly living in Tokyo and the neighboring prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa as well as in Osaka and nearby Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures are eligible for inoculations at the state-run centers, provided they have not already received a vaccine shot.

But to avoid overwhelming the reservation system, the first week of vaccinations at the centers are restricted to residents of Tokyo’s 23 wards and Osaka city.

The slots — 49,000 at the Tokyo site and 24,500 at the Osaka venue — were quickly filled after the Defense Ministry started accepting reservations on May 17 on its website and via the Line messaging app.

Japan’s vaccination program started in February with health care workers and later expanded to the elderly totaling about 36 million people. But only around 4 percent of the country’s population of 126 million has received at least one dose.

The inoculations have been conducted by local governments using the vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE.

SDF doctors and nurses as well as private nurses who run the vaccination centers received Moderna shots on Sunday, the ministry said.

Some local governments separately plan to set up their own large vaccination sites, with the prefectures of Miyagi, Gunma and Aichi opening their venues Monday.

Cr.KYODO NEWS