TOKYO, January 4. /TASS/. The Japanese leadership has begun to consider the possibility of introducing an emergency regime in the country due to the situation with the spread of coronavirus, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced on Monday at a press conference.
He noted that in the Greater Tokyo Area there has been no clear decrease in the number of people who visit entertainment venues in the evenings, mentioning the likely need for new measures to prevent the spread of infection.
On January 2, four governors of the prefectures of Greater Tokyo appealed to the country's government to review the possibility of introducing an emergency regime.
The situation with the coronavirus in Japan began to worsen since the beginning of November, and in December the records for daily growth and mortality were regularly updated. The total number of cases exceeded 245,000, more than 3,600 deaths were reported.
The emergency regime operated in Japan in April and May 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic. No severe restrictions on movement or fines were introduced during this period. Residents of the country were urged not to leave their homes unnecessarily, and educational institutions, shopping centers, nightclubs, bars, museums, theaters, and other facilities were closed at the request of the authorities. Companies have transferred most of their employees to remote work. Restaurants and cafes worked on a shorter schedule, mostly for take-away only. At the same time, during the second surge in the incidence (in July and August), the authorities did not take similar measures.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.