TOKYO: Japanese health minister Norihisa Tamura expressed a cautious stance on Friday about an early lifting of the second state of emergency over the novel coronavirus, in place for Tokyo and nine prefectures.

The state of emergency is scheduled to end on March 7.

“If we don’t achieve a sufficient reduction in the number of new infection cases, there will be another big wave when we start to be active again. Personally, I think we should fully take that into consideration,” Tamura said.

Tamura made the comments after a ministry advisory panel said Thursday that the speed of the decrease in infection cases may be slowing down.

Meanwhile, administrative reform minister Taro Kono, who is in charge of coronavirus vaccination preparatory work, has indicated that the estimated number of health care workers to be vaccinated from March will increase by some one million from the initial figure of about 3.7 million.

“We cannot say that the increase of one million people will not affect the next stage of priority vaccinations. We must ensure that the vaccine supply is adequate,” Tamura said.

Japan’s vaccination program started this week, covering the first group of some 40,000 medical workers. The government aims to begin inoculating about 36 million people aged 65 or older in April.

JIJI Press