Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Tuesday received the first dose of a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a hospital in Tokyo, in a bid to reassure about the safety of the jab.
Suga will head to the US in April for a meeting with President Joe Biden and in doing so making the Prime Minister the first foreign leader to meet the latter in person, reports Xinhua news agency.
Suga will receive his second dose in three weeks.
Initially, the Prime Minister said he would wait until mid-April when the national vaccination stage would reach people aged 65 or older, after all of the country’s healthcare workers had been vaccinated.
After the people aged 65s and older, those with underlying conditions and working in elderly care facilities will be eligible to be inoculated.
The general public will be the last in line to receive their jabs.
Suga was keen to have his jab in front of the cameras in light of there being some reluctance among the Japanese population about being inoculated.
A survey conducted by Kyodo News showed that only 63.1 per cent of respondents wanted to be vaccinated.