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People wear masks when praying on the first day of 2021 at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, Japan on January 1 – Photo: REUTERS
On Feb. 1, Japan’s chief of response to the COVID-19 pandemic said the country would consider issuing a new emergency after leaders from the Tokyo metropolitan area urged action to address the record surge in cases, according to Reuters News.
After meeting with the mayor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, and leaders of three neighboring provinces, Japanese Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters that the government should consult with health experts first. Decisions announced as above.
“The central government and three prefectures have the same opinion that the situation in the Tokyo metropolitan area is deteriorating, it may be necessary to declare a state of emergency,” Nishimura said.
The official said that temporarily restaurants and karaoke bars in the Tokyo metropolitan area will have to close at 20 p.m., while businesses serving alcohol will close at 7 p.m.
Japan once declared a national emergency in April 2020, when the first wave of COVID-19 outbreaks broke out. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has opposed calling for the measure to be reinstated. He is scheduled to make a public statement on January 4.
Tokyo raised COVID-19 alarms to the highest on December 17, 2020. The number of new infections in the Japanese capital reached a record 1,337 cases on December 31, 2020 (surpassing 1,000 daily cases for the first time since inception of the epidemic season), while the figures for January 2, 2021 were 814. The number of cases nationwide also rose to a record on December 31, 2020, with 4,520 additional cases.
“I hope that the number of cases will be even higher in the coming days, and the emergency declaration should have occurred earlier, in November or December 2020” – Ms. Fumie Sakamoto, specialist at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, commented and suggested that the administration was not acting hard enough to control the epidemic.
