Yoshihide Suga announced that it will restart the state of emergency

Yoshihide Suga announced that it will restart the state of emergency. Can the Tokyo Olympics be held on time?

According to a report in Tokyo, Reuters on January 4th, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said at the New Year’s press conference on January 4th that the Japanese government would consider declaring a state of emergency in the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area due to the rising number of cases in COVID-19. This further worries the outside world whether Japan can reduce the negative impact of the epidemic on the economy and host the Tokyo Olympic Games.

The epidemic in Japan has reached a new peak, with a record of 4520 new cases on December 31, 2020, prompting Tokyo and the surrounding three counties to hope that the government will declare a state of emergency. On January 3rd, 3158 new cases were reported in Japan, and the number of new cases in Tokyo and its surrounding areas accounted for more than half of the whole country.

„Even during the three-day holiday of the New Year, the number of new cases in the Greater Tokyo area has not decreased,“ Yoshihide Suga said at the press conference. „We think we need to send a stronger message.“

Laut der Meldung, Yoshihide Suga did not make it clear when the government will make a decision. If officially announced, this will be the second time that some parts of Japan have entered a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The first emergency lasted for more than a month in the spring of 2020, when schools and non-essential enterprises were required to close.

Since the press conference did not release detailed information, many Japanese people expressed surprise and confusion on Twitter. A netizen said: „This morning’s news said that there were only 200 days before the opening of the Olympic Games, but in the afternoon it said that a new state of emergency would be declared. What is going on? „

The report also said that since the outbreak, there have been more than 245,000 confirmed cases and about 3,600 deaths in Japan. Although Japan’s epidemic data doesn’t look so bad compared with many countries in Europe and America where the epidemic is raging, the Japanese government is faced with the great challenge of hosting the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer. Affected by the epidemic, the Tokyo Olympic Games originally scheduled to be held in 2020 has been postponed once in an unprecedented way.