Japan PM says government will consider state of emergency for Tokyo area

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Monday the government would consider declaring a state of emergency for the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area as coronavirus cases climb and strain the country’s medical system.

The possible emergency declaration would mark a reversal, as has Suga resisted any such drastic steps to restrict economic activity.

Japan saw a record 4,520 new cases on Thursday, prompting the capital, Tokyo, and three neighboring prefectures to seek an emergency declaration from the national government.

The region now accounts for about half of new nationwide cases.

“Even during the three days of the New Year’s holidays, cases didn’t go down in the greater Tokyo area,” Suga said at a news conference to mark the start of 2021. “We felt that a stronger message was needed.”

He did not say when the government would make a decision, or what restrictions would follow.

The first state of emergency, declared in the spring of 2020, lasted more than a month, shutting down schools and nonessential businesses.

Suga repeated, however, that many of the new cases with unknown origins were likely linked to restaurants, and that the government’s latest request for restaurants in the Tokyo area to close at 8 pm, rather than 10 pm, should be effective.

As a third wave of infections hit Japan in December, the government paused a popular subsidized travel program for two weeks through January 11.

Suga said resuming the “Go To Travel” program would be tough under a state of emergency.

Toshihiro Nagahama, an economist at Dai- ichi Life Research Institute, estimated that a month- long suspension of non- urgent spending by consumers in the Greater Tokyo area would reduce gross domestic product by 2.8 trillion yen ($ 27 billion), or an annualized 0.5 percent.

Although the case numbers in Japan pale in comparison to many parts of Europe and the Americas, Suga has the challenge of hosting the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 after the pandemic caused the Games’ first- ever delay in 2020.