TOKYO: Tokyo and neighboring Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures on Monday decided to ask local eating and drinking establishments serving alcoholic beverages to close by 8pm between Friday and Jan. 31 in response to resurging novel coronavirus infections.

From Jan. 12, all eating and drinking facilities, including those not serving alcohol, will be subject to the request. The four prefectures are now asking for closures at 10pm or earlier for stores serving alcoholic drinks.

Financial aid to establishments accepting the request will be increased. Meanwhile, the four prefectures said that they may change the period of the request depending on the Japanese government’s basic policy against the coronavirus, to be released when it issues a fresh state of emergency over the virus for the Japanese capital and the three surrounding prefectures.

In their joint coronavirus emergency measures, the four prefectures also requested residents to refrain from going out after 8 p.m. and promote telework further.

At their online meeting on Monday, the governors discussed their responses after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced the same day his government’s plan to consider issuing an emergency declaration for the four prefectures, where the virus is spreading rapidly.

Specifically, the governors affirmed a policy of preventing a further spread of the virus in the Tokyo metropolitan area through measures including setting numerical targets for teleworking in their respective prefectures.

“The infection situation has entered a totally difference stage,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told a press conference after the videoconference.

“It’s necessary to thoroughly reduce the movement of people and interpersonal contact, on top of efforts by individuals,” she said.

When the Japanese government put a state of emergency over the coronavirus into place in spring last year, the Tokyo metropolitan government asked for temporary closures or shorter operating hours for a variety of facilities, including schools.

Koike said that the metropolitan government is not planning to ask schools to close this time.

If a fresh coronavirus state of emergency is declared, the metropolitan government will work with the central government to decide the scope of facilities to be covered by its request for business suspension and shorter operating hours in order to curb infections while trying to avoid confusion in society as much as possible.

Coronavirus infections spread further in the Tokyo metropolitan area during the year-end and New Year’s holiday period, putting the medical systems in the area under greater pressure.

At a meeting with economic revitalization minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on Saturday, the governors of the four prefectures requested the central government to declare a state of emergency over the epidemic. Nishimura, who is in charge of the state’s coronavirus responses, asked the governors to enhance their requests for shorter business hours.

The central government declared a state of emergency over the epidemic on April 7 last year, targeting Tokyo and six other prefectures, and expanded it to cover all of the remaining 40 prefectures of the country on April 16. The state of emergency was lifted in stages in the following month.

At Monday’s press conference, Koike suggested that the metropolitan government is ready to publish the names of eating and drinking establishments that fail to comply with its request to close by 8 p.m.

“A fresh emergency declaration will be of great significance if it is issued,” she said, adding, “The most important thing is to boost the efficacy of the declaration.”

“We’re resolved to curb infections by, among other things, announcing the names” of stores that refuse to close at 8 p.m. or earlier, based on Article 45 of the special measures law against the coronavirus, Koike said.

Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa separately said that the prefectural government will earnestly ask eating and drinking facilities to follow the request in order to increase the effects of the measure.

Chiba Governor Kensaku Morita warned that the medical care system will collapse unless Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa work in unity to prevent the virus from spreading further.

JIJI Press