Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday lifted a state of emergency in Tokyo as the rate of new cases declined.
May 25 (UPI) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday lifted a state of emergency in Tokyo as the rate of new cases declined.
The prime minister also declared an end to the emergency in Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures, as well as Hokkaido, about a week earlier than expected. He declared the emergency in Tokyo on April 16 in response to climbing coronavirus cases and deaths.
Japan, which has a population of 126 million, has had 16,500 confirmed cases and 820 deaths as of Monday morning, according to John Hopkins University’s global tracker.
At its peak, Japan was reporting about 1,000 confirmed new cases in a day, but that number has dwindled.
„Recently, new infection cases have fallen below 50 for the entire nation,“ Abe said, „and what was once nearly 10,000 hospitalized cases — that has now fallen below 2,000.
„The lifting of the emergency does not mean the virus is gone or infections are down to zero. Our battle against the virus will continue.“
The announcement came as the global number of confirmed cases neared 5.
