Photo/Illutration Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister who heads the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, fourth from left, and Shigeru Omi, chief of the government's expert panel on responding to the COVID-19 health crisis, left, attend a panel meeting in Tokyo on Aug. 25. (Shinnosuke Ito)

The government on Aug. 25 is to expand its COVID-19 state of emergency to eight more prefectures in an effort to contain a dramatic surge in infections.

Tokyo and Osaka are among 13 prefectures already slapped with emergency curbs.

The latest targeted prefectures--Miyagi, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga, Okayama and Hiroshima, as well as the northern main island of Hokkaido--are currently under pre-emergency measures.

The government's expert panel on ways to respond to the pandemic approved the plan in the morning of Aug. 25. The government is to officially decide on the expansion in the afternoon.

Pre-emergency measures, which are currently enforced in 16 prefectures, are to be applied for Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki and Miyazaki prefectures as well.

The state of emergency and the pre-emergency measures for the latest additions will kick off Aug. 27 and end Sept. 12.

With the government’s new additions, the emergency and pre-emergency steps will cover 21 and 12 prefectures, respectively. Those 33 prefectures account for 70 percent of the nation's 47 prefectures.

“We will make stronger efforts to bolster medical care services and secure more hospital beds by using temporary medical facilities, for example,” Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister who heads the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, told the expert panel in reference to areas where the state of emergency or other countermeasures are in force or about to be enforced.

Noting that a new semester will start soon, Nishimura said the government “will try to strengthen our preventive measures in schools against the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible.”

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