Japan makes Covid-19 emergency nationwide

Tokyo

JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expanded a state of emergency to include the entire country on Thursday and said the government was considering cash payouts for all in an effort to stem the Covid-19 outbreak and cushion the economic downturn.

With more than 9,000 infections and nearly 200 deaths nationally, the government has declared an emergency in Tokyo and six areas including western Osaka, but other regions have sought to be added amid worries about the spreading virus.

While short of a lockdown, the state of emergency imposed for a month from April 7 gave the authorities more power to push people to stay home and businesses to close. It has covered about 44 per cent of the population up until now.

Mr Abe said the emergency would be in place until May 6 and was aimed at reducing traffic during the Golden Week holiday season around the start of May. "We absolutely need to avoid people moving across prefectures in order to prevent the spread of the virus going forward towards Golden Week," he said, in comments following a meeting with advisers.

Mr Abe is under pressure to do more to control the virus amid perceptions that his response has been too little, too late, denting his support among voters, and Japan Inc.

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Japan faced a long battle and governors would need to tailor their response to local needs, Koji Wada, an expert advising policymakers, said.

"We are still on the brink of the Covid-19 war," added Mr Wada, a professor at the capital's International University of Health and Welfare. "We are still just at the beginning."

Health minister Katsunobu Kato said officials were worried about the rapid spread of infections, which have increased 2.2 times between April 7 and Wednesday. In particular, officials are worried that travellers during the holiday could carry the virus to places where infections have so far been low, Mr Kato said.

Mr Abe said the government was considering cash payouts of 100,000 yen (S$1,329) for everyone, an attempt to cushion the blow to the world's third-largest economy.

The government's supplementary budget plan has set aside funds for cash payouts of 300,000 yen to households whose incomes have been hit by the virus, but that will be changed to the individual payouts, a government official earlier told Reuters.

The change follows growing calls from ruling and opposition lawmakers for bolder steps by Mr Abe to help people ride out the pandemic.

The International Monetary Fund, which expects Japan's economy to contract by 5.2 per cent this year, has urged it to boost fiscal spending and focus on easing the hit to growth. REUTERS