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TOKYO: The Japanese government plans to extend the state of emergency to combat COVID-19 in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures until March 21, two weeks longer than originally scheduled, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Friday (March 5). .
Under the state of emergency, the government has requested that restaurants and bars close at 8 pm and stop serving alcohol an hour earlier. People are also asked to stay home after 8pm unless they have essential reasons for going out.
The prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama, which make up 30 percent of the country’s population, requested the extension beyond the originally scheduled end date of March 7, as new coronavirus cases had not decreased. enough to meet the objectives.
Suga made the announcement, echoing a previous one made by the Minister of Economy, at the beginning of a meeting on the management of the coronavirus.
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said in a video conference by governors of the affected area that the extension was essential.
“We cannot make things recover now, this is a really important moment and I think we all understand that,” he said.
“We will stay in close contact with each other and defeat the virus.”
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The move adds to the challenges facing restaurants and related businesses.
“As long as the government asks us to hold out for another two weeks, we will follow their instructions. But that would be a matter of life and death for us,” said Akira Koganezawa, vice president of the association of 55 restaurants serving monjayaki. , a popular fried batter dish in the Tokyo area.
“Without enough subsidies, some restaurants would go out of business,” he said.
Fuji TV, citing an unidentified government official, reported Friday that another extension could not be ruled out until the end of March.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is considering establishing criteria to lift the state of emergency that daily new infections remain below 140 on a weekly average, the Nikkei reported.
Tokyo’s daily new infection averaged 269 over the past week to March 4, according to Reuters calculations.
The government is eager to control the spread of the virus as preparations for the Tokyo Olympics ramp up with just four and a half months left until they start.
Foreign athletes have been banned from entering Japan to train before the Games during the state of emergency. It was not immediately clear if the ban would hold during the Tokyo region extension, while the order has already been lifted for the rest of the country.
The current restrictions are narrower in scope than those imposed under an emergency in the spring of last year when schools and non-essential businesses were mostly closed.
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Still, the number of new cases is at a fraction of its peak in early January, when the state of emergency took effect. Tokyo reported 279 cases on Thursday, compared with a record 2,520 on January 7.
Nationwide, Japan has recorded around 433,000 cases and 8,050 deaths from COVID-19 as of Wednesday.
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