TOKYO: The Self-Defense Forces are preparing for a spike in deployment requests for disaster relief efforts as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to shoot up in Japan.

The move comes with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe believed to be preparing to declare a state of emergency.

SDF members have been dispatched to Tokyo and other prefectures to act as liaisons with the local governments, Defense Minister Taro Kono said Monday.

"If we receive deployment requests from prefectural governors, we will consider whether we can respond to them," Kono said.

The Defense Ministry has been receiving a series of deployment requests from municipalities since early this month.

On Saturday, SDF medical personnel started aiding efforts to conduct COVID-19 checks using the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test method in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, after receiving a request from the prefectural government.

On Friday, SDF troops transported an infected patient in the island city of Iki, Nagasaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan, by helicopter, responding to a prefectural request.

Prior to the requests, the ministry had voluntarily dispatched troops to support quarantine efforts at Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, and elsewhere.

According to the SDF and other sources, personnel from the Ground SDF's 1st Division, based in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, was dispatched to the Tokyo metropolitan government, while members of the GSDF's Northern Army, based in Sapporo, Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, were sent to the Hokkaido prefectural government for exchanging information on necessary aid.

According to the Cabinet Secretariat, a recently revised special measures law designed to boost efforts to contain the coronavirus, under which an emergency declaration would be made, does not stipulate activities by the SDF.

But an explosive increase in the number of COVID-19 infection cases could lead to calls for units under the SDF law to transport emergency goods and move patients with light symptoms to lodging facilities, to prevent a collapse of the health care system.

An emergency declaration would allow prefectures to request residents to stay at home, akin to a lockdown. But the ambiguity of the definition of the supposed lockdown, as well as the lack of binding force for such requests, makes it unclear what can actually be done.

It is possible for prefectural governors to limit or shut down transportation for up to 72 hours under the infectious diseases control law to disinfect locations contaminated by pathogens, but the rule is not designed to stop movements of people across a wide area.

"The SDF will not be involved with lockdowns" in the event of an emergency declaration, Kono said in a press conference on Friday.

JIJI Press