Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has cancelled planned trips to Africa and the Middle East after testing positive for COVID-19.
Kishida is isolating himself after devising a mild fever and delayed cough on Saturday, and a PCR test showed he had the coronavirus, said Noriyuki Shikata, cabinet secretary for public affairs in the prime minister’s office.
“Prime Minister Kishida is isolated from his residence,” Shikata told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The 65-year-old prime minister is due to return to work on Monday after spending the last week of vacation.
Kishida will no longer attend an in-person convention on Africa’s progress later this month in Tunisia, but she will participate online. He also postponed an upcoming Middle East excursion that had scheduled stops in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Japan has noted its largest backlog of COVID cases in recent weeks, with most of the population having been vaccinated.
Kishida’s postponement of his commitments comes as his government faces declining approval amid scrutiny of its ties to the Unification Church and its reaction to the pandemic.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s ties to the church, founded in South Korea in the 1950s, have been highlighted since the man suspected of assassinating former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe accused the organization of bankrupting his mother.
In a survey conducted through the Mainichi Shimbun over the weekend, 36 percent of respondents said they approved of Kishida’s performance, up from 52 percent a month ago.
Kishida reorganized his cabinet earlier this month in a bid to bolster his support, some cabinet members with ties to the church.