Vaccine rollout kicking into gear, emergency over

With Japan initially entirely reliant on imports of the Pfizer vaccine, many initial concerns over the speed of the vaccine rollout centred on supply constraints. However, that hasn't been an issue thus far. Instead, the major bottleneck right now is getting the vaccine into arms. We expect such teething problems to be resolved over the coming months and remain confident in our view that the recovery will get a shot in the arm from end-Q2. Meanwhile, the lifting of the state of emergency in all remaining prefectures from this weekend will give a more immediate boost to consumer spending heading into Q2.