A government subcommittee has approved the government proposal to declare a state of emergency for Okinawa Prefecture, which has seen a rapid increase in novel coronavirus infections.
The final decision is set to be made on Friday evening at the government's Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters.
On Friday morning, an expert advisory subcommittee on basic response measures approved the government's proposal to declare a state of emergency for the prefecture from Sunday through June 20.
With the addition of Okinawa Prefecture, there will be 10 prefectures under the state of emergency.
"The number of new infections [in Okinawa Prefecture] has hovered around 200 per day, which is very high," Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister in charge of economic revitalization and the nation's COVID-19 response, said at the subcommittee meeting: "Hospital beds are reaching capacity and there are still an extremely large number of patients with mild symptoms. We need stronger countermeasures."
Emergency-level priority measures have been in effect in Naha and other areas in the prefecture since April 12, but the number of infections surged after the Golden Week holidays. Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said at a press conference Thursday that he planned to request restaurants and bars that serve alcohol to suspend operations once the state of emergency takes effect.
The subcommittee also approved a proposal to lift on Saturday emergency-level priority measures currently in place for Ehime Prefecture, noting the downtrend in the number of novel coronavirus cases in the prefecture. Ehime's pre-emergency measures were originally slated to run until the end of this month.
The central government decided not to issue the state of emergency requested by Gifu Prefecture, instead keeping the current priority measure designation in place for the prefecture, citing a drop in foot traffic in downtown Gifu.
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