May 14, 2021 at 19:05 JST
The Osaka governor tours a mass vaccination site in Osaka's Kita Ward on May 3. (Yoshiaki Arai)
Hokkaido on May 14 confirmed 593 new COVID-19 cases, the second-highest ever for the northernmost main island.
Hokkaido, which will be placed under a state of emergency from May 16, confirmed a record number of new cases the previous day with 712.
The latest number was a decline, but health officials remained alarmed by the fact that more than 400 new cases have been recorded every day for the past seven days.
The number of cases exceeded 500 on four dates, May 9, 12, 13 and 14.
In the capital, Sapporo, 346 people newly tested positive for the virus.
Eight deaths were confirmed in Hokkaido, of which six were in Sapporo.
The number of new COVID-19 cases in Osaka Prefecture dropped to 576 on May 14, the first time the number went below 600 since April 5.
However, the number of deaths from infections remained the same from the previous day with 33, health officials said.
The daily counts bring the prefecture's accumulated total infections to 93,436 and the death toll to 1,901.
Osaka reported its highest number of daily deaths, 55, on May 11.
In the Kyushu region, Kumamoto and Oita prefectures confirmed a record number of new infection cases, with 124 and 102, respectively.
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