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The emergency declaration runs from Friday until February 2 and applies to Tokyo and the three neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa. The emergency includes a series of restrictions in daily life.
Suga has ordered companies to encourage their staff to work from home and reduce the office population by 70%.
Residents of affected areas are also urged to avoid non-essential exits. The hospitality sector has been affected, restaurants were ordered to close at 8 pm and sporting events were ordered to limit the number of spectators present.
Suga said Thursday that the government will provide up to 1.8 million yen ($ 17,400) per month to each restaurant that complies with a request to shorten its hours of operation.
Despite the series of new measures, schools will remain open.
“There have been few cases of school infections that have spread from the schools to the community and we would like to protect the learning opportunities of the children who will lead the future,” Suga said Thursday at a news conference.
Japan’s leader stressed that the country still intends to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in July, despite the emergency.
“I am determined to keep games safe and secure by taking all possible measures against infection,” Suga said.
Suga has come under fire for what has been perceived as his reluctance to take action to combat the spread of the virus, after the governor of Tokyo and the three neighboring prefectures urged him to issue an emergency declaration during a televised press conference in La last week.
Japan’s first state of emergency, declared last spring, relatively early in the pandemic, lasted more than a month and closed schools and non-essential businesses.
The state of emergency comes as new cases of Covid-19 and hospitalizations in Tokyo and the rest of the country reach their highest levels.
On Wednesday, Japan recorded 5,953 new Covid-19 infections, its highest number of daily cases and the first time that infections passed the 5,000 mark, and 72 deaths. The national total has risen to 259,105, with at least 3,804 deaths.
The Greater Tokyo region has been among the worst hit, surpassing 2,000 cases a day on Thursday for the first time with a record 2,447 new infections, according to updated figures from the Tokyo metropolitan government.
The number of seriously ill Covid-19 patients needing hospitalization also continued to rise. In the capital, on Thursday there were 121 patients in serious condition and more than 3,000 received medical attention at the hospital.
Across the country, the number of people in serious condition rose by 13 on Wednesday to 784, with 41,054 people hospitalized.
In a meeting with the Japanese Ministry of Health on Wednesday, infectious disease experts called for immediate and strict measures to combat the outbreak.
“If you look at the number of people recently infected in the last week, only Tokyo represents a quarter of the national total. The total number in the metropolitan area, including three other prefectures, represents half the total number of the entire country. It is difficult to control the outbreak in rural areas unless we can stop the spread of the virus in the metropolitan area immediately, “said Takaji Wakita, head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases after the meeting.
Others said the state of emergency would be insufficient to curb the infection rate by the end of the month.
“I predict that this is not a sufficient period to slow the increase in infection, we need to reduce human contact further,” said Satoshi Kamayachi, a physician and one of the members of the expert advisory board, speaking with CNN affiliate TV Asahi .
Hiroshi Nishiura, a Kyoto University professor specializing in mathematical modeling for infectious diseases, told the meeting that an emergency declaration should last two months for the daily number of new infections to drop to manageable levels.
But cases across the country have been on the rise since early November thanks in part to cold winter weather and fatigue from social distancing.
Japanese officials are believed to be wary of introducing a blockade or other emergency measures for fear of damaging the economy. The country is also once again facing difficult decisions around the Olympics, which were to be made last summer but were ultimately postponed as the pandemic spread across the globe.
The Tokyo Games are scheduled to take place this summer from July 23 to August 8, according to the International Olympic Committee, with reduced opening and closing ceremonies in line with a “general simplification of the Games.”
On Thursday, the Tokyo metropolitan government said it would postpone the upcoming torch displays of the Tokyo Olympics “to reduce the flow of people and prevent the spread of Covid-19.” The torch had been on display in various municipalities since November and was due to restart this week.
Japan was one of the first countries to hit the pandemic, but the government was able to keep cases at bay by enacting strict border controls, investing in contact tracing efforts and pressuring its citizens to practice social distancing. The efforts had been highly successful, with Japan able to avoid the kind of strict blockades enacted in other parts of the world.
Japanese health officials have continually urged citizens to cut back on their daily activities, stay vigilant, and eat out only small amounts, but that no longer appears to be enough to stop the spread of the pandemic.
Junko Ogura reported from Tokyo, Japan, Helen Regan wrote from Hong Kong. CNN’s James Griffiths contributed to this report.
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