Taiju Life Insurance halts sales of COVID-19 cover

This comes amidst a surge in Omicron cases in Japan.

Japanese insurer Taiju Life Insurance has announced that it will stop selling its COVID-19 insurance product due to a rapid surge of the Omicron variant in the country.

The policy, which has a monthly premium of JP¥370 for men and JP¥340 for women, provides a lump-sum payment of JP¥100,000 ($868.44) in the event the customer is hospitalised after becoming infected by COVID-19.

Company officials said that the policy will no longer be sold due to possible difficulties of paying the lump-sum benefit to policyholders.

A total of around 57,000 customers have bought the insurance product which was launched on 21 December last year.
Cases of COVID-19 in Tokyo reached 21,576 last friday, the first time the capital reached more than 20,000 new cases in a single day.