By Charles McJilton | CEO
On April 24th Prime Minister Suga called a state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo Prefecture. This will last until May 11th but may be extended if cases continue to increase.
We continue to provide food assistance from marugohan market. However, as we wrote in our previous reports, it is still not safe to allow people to come in and "shop" for what they need. We understand that this aspect of the project was very appealing to our users and we are continually asked, "When are you going to reopen?" As much as we would like reopen and allow people to shop for what they need, we still feel it is not completely safe for our users and volunteers. The space is very small compared to supermarkets that are open.
Our coupon system which we introduced last year has greatly increased our ability to handle large numbers in a short period of time. This greatly reduces the number of people waiting to receive assistance.
In my January dispatch I wrote that May would be the earliest for us to re-open marugohan. With less than 0.8% of the population vaccinated and roll-out not to take place for several months, it is quite likely we will not be able to re-open marugohan in 2021.
We will continue to keep you updated.
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