Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Thursday the country’s state of emergency will be lifted on Sunday in all but Okinawa Prefecture, as cases continue to decline nationwide and the fourth wave of the pandemic appears to have crested weeks ago.
Quasi-emergency measures, however, will remain in place in seven of the nine prefectures that are seeing the emergency end Sunday, including Tokyo and Osaka.
The state of emergency in Okinawa — where new cases are declining, albeit not as quickly as in the rest of the nation — and quasi-emergency measures in the seven prefectures coming out of the state of emergency will both be in place until July 11.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.