May 31 ,2020. 5 hours ago – 13:05 KYODO NEWS

TOKYO – The government has no immediate plan to place Tokyo and Fukuoka Prefecture under a state of emergency again despite the areas seeing an increase in the number of coronavirus infection cases in recent days, economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said Sunday.

Nishimura, the minister in charge of Japan’s virus response, said he does not expect new infection case numbers to increase rapidly as the country reopens its economy but will continue to carefully monitor the situation.

“We have not come to such a stage (reinstating a state of emergency),” Nishimura said on an NHK program.

The southwestern city of Kitakyushu in Fukuoka had no confirmed coronavirus infections from April 30 to May 22 but began to see double-digit daily growth in cases due to cluster infections at medical institutions.

In Tokyo, the number of new daily cases had fallen to single digits but started to creep up from Tuesday, the day after the government lifted the state of emergency for the capital and several other prefectures.

Nishimura said many of the new infections were contracted at hospitals and that the people who came into close contact with the infected people have been traced.

As of Saturday, 5,231 cases have been confirmed in Tokyo and 741 in Fukuoka.

CR: KYODO NEWS