OREANDA-NEWS  Due to the spread of infection, the Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called on local authorities to strengthen support for the health system to ensure a sufficient number of hospital beds as well as equipment, including ventilators. He noted the particular importance of prevention in schools and other educational institutions. 

"The country continues to record an increase of new cases of infection. In this regard, we decided to add Aichi Prefecture, Gifu, Mie, Miyagi, Okayama, Shiga, Hiroshima and Hokkaido prefectures to the emergency zone. The validity of the measures is from August 27 to September 12", Suga said. 

At the moment, the state of emergency operates in another 13 regions of Japan, including the capital Tokyo as well as Osaka, Kyoto and Okinawa. Thus, the measures will apply to 21 of the 47 prefectures. Recently, the situation with the spread of the pandemic has been steadily deteriorating in Japan, anti-records of the daily increase in the number of infected people are regularly updated.