Japan to expand COVID-19 state of emergency to 8 more prefectures

Hokkaido, Miyagi, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga, Okayama and Hiroshima will come under the measure from Friday until Sept. 12.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met with members of his Cabinet including health minister Norihisa Tamura and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of the COVID-19 response, to discuss the move, with the decision to be made official at a task force meeting on Wednesday.

Under the state of emergency, restaurants are asked not to serve alcohol or offer karaoke, and instructed to close by 8 p.m. Major commercial facilities including department stores and shopping malls are asked to limit the number of customers allowed in at the same time.

Suga has also called on the public to reduce outings to crowded areas by 50 percent, and for firms to have employees work from home and cut commuters by 70 percent.

The expansion of the state of emergency -- currently in place in Tokyo as well as Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Saitama, Kanagawa, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Fukuoka and Okinawa prefectures -- comes as the capital hosts the Paralympics, to be held almost entirely without spectators, from Tuesday.

The government is also set to expand the quasi-state of emergency covering 16 prefectures to another four -- Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki and Miyazaki -- the sources said, a move that would allow governors to place business restrictions on specific areas rather than on their entire prefectures.

Hospitals across much of Japan are struggling amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, with a dearth of beds forcing many with milder symptoms to cope at home.

Last week, the National Governors' Association called on the government to impose either a state of emergency or a quasi-state of emergency nationwide in order to curb the spread of infections.