Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida prepares for a Cabinet meeting in the prime minister’s office on March 15. (Koichi Ueda)

The government is set to lift COVID-19 pre-emergency measures in 18 prefectures as scheduled on March 21.

The 18 prefectures are: Hokkaido, Aomori, Tochigi, Gunma, Ibaraki, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Ishikawa, Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi, Kyoto, Hyogo, Osaka, Kagawa and Kumamoto.

Medical services remain somewhat strained in Osaka Prefecture from the latest spread of the novel coronavirus, but its government decided on March 16 not to request an extension of the pre-emergency measures.

The central government’s panel of COVID-19 experts on March 11 gave the green light to new guidelines on lifting pre-emergency measures.

So far, the conditions for prefectures were a decline in new COVID-19 cases and an increasing availability of hospital beds. Specifically, for their medical care systems, the hospital bed usage ratio must remain under 50 percent for COVID-19 patients and those with serious symptoms.

But the panel almost unanimously approved the government-proposed guideline that only one of the conditions needs to be met to lift the pre-emergency measures.

Although the occupancy rates of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients exceeded 50 percent in Chiba, Aichi and other prefectures on March 14, the number of new COVID-19 cases is decreasing there.

Therefore, the government deems it appropriate to end the pre-emergency measures in those prefectures.

The Tokyo metropolitan government on March 15 submitted a written request to the central government not to extend the pre-emergency measures in the capital.

The document said the weekly daily average of new COVID-19 cases in Tokyo continues to fall from the previous week, and the usage rate of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients and those with serious symptoms are both below 50 percent.

The document said Tokyo meets all requirements for the lifting of the pre-emergency measures.

Cabinet Secretariat data submitted to a March 15 meeting of a health ministry advisory board on COVID-19 showed that five of the 18 prefectures had usage rates of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients exceeding 50 percent as of March 14.

The rates were 54 percent in Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, 53 percent in Aichi Prefecture, 62 percent in Osaka Prefecture, and 50 percent in Hyogo Prefecture, according to the data.

The numbers were all more than 5 percent lower than those from the previous week.

Experts at the meeting noted that 14 prefectures logged week-on-week increases in new COVID-19 cases, including Aomori, Ibaraki, Kagawa and Kumamoto.

However, the meeting heard that the number of new cases nationwide was falling in all age groups. The daily average of new cases in Japan has been around 87 percent of the average for the previous week.

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