The Curious Case of Japan In The COVID Times: Where It All Went Wrong For The Abe Administration medium.com

Similarly, by the time South Korea had the same number of deaths as Japan, they had three times as many confirmed cases.
Yet it seems highly unlikely that under-testing alone would explain Japans’ low COVID-19 case count.
New daily confirmed cases, Japan’s number still miniscule compared to places it hit 100 cases before.
Indeed, the fact that the virus spread so far in South Korea was something of a surprise.
Furthermore, because of the exponential nature of COVID-19’s spread, social distancing measures taken early have an outside effect on the speed with which the disease spreads.