Japan's Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide. (Photo: asgam)

Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide said Monday that stronger messaging was needed to make people take the COVID-19 threat more seriously.

Government officials said that the emergency status is expected to run from Thursday or Friday and is likely to be kept in place for roughly one month for Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures.

Tokyo accounts for the most infections of all Japan's 47 prefectures. The greater Tokyo area and its three surrounding prefectures comprise around 50% of the about 3,000 new daily cases reported on average. The number of new infections reported each day has increased more than tenfold since a state of emergency was previously declared by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in April of last year.

Having rolled out a near complete blanket ban on entries to Japan in late December 2020, with new visa applications being halted, the government may also suspend the entry of business people and students from countries with eased restrictions.