84th Meeting of the Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters

On January 19, 2022, the Prime Minister held the 84th meeting of the Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters at the Prime Minister’s Office.

At the meeting, the participants discussed the response to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Following the discussion, the Prime Minister said,

“Today we have decided to apply priority measures to prevent the spread of disease in a total of 13 prefectures, namely, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Gunma, Niigata, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Kagawa, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, and Miyazaki Prefectures for the period from January 21 to February 13.

The Government concluded that we should apply priority measures in the requested areas of Tokyo and 12 prefectures on the basis that, first, each municipality needs to make further preparations to ensure that their established medical systems are fully operational, and second, it is necessary to take well-coordinated measures to curb the increase in the number of infected people.

In doing so, we will strengthen the measures such as by suspending the serving of alcohol at dining and drinking establishments at the discretion of prefectural governors, as we did before. In the meantime, the use of vaccines and testing as a package will in principle be temporarily suspended for the time being, while continuing to allow for its application at the discretion of prefectural governors. The recently added measure enabling the easing of restrictions if all members of a group have tested negative will be maintained.

At the same time, in order to further strengthen its capacity to respond primarily to the growing number of patients recuperating at home, the Government will work on a series of measures, such as establishing temporary medical facilities and oxygen stations, increasing the production of pulse oximeters and antigen testing kits, and facilitating the dispatch of medical personnel to areas where infections are rapidly spreading.

In this battle against unknown viruses, I hope that sufficient preparations without undue fear, close collaboration with prefectural governments and scientific judgements based on expertise provided by experts, as well as cooperation from medical professionals and, above all, that from citizens, will help us to overcome this challenge.

I ask each minister to remain highly vigilant in tackling the situation.”