Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his deputy won't attend meetings together to cut coronavirus risks as pressure for a lockdown builds, with domestic cases topping 2,000 and a minister saying the country's containment strategy was stretched to the limit.
Abe told Cabinet members on Tuesday that his second-in-command, Taro Aso, would no longer be present at any meeting the prime minister attends, a government spokesman said, in a move to guard leadership against infection that could hamper Japan's efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Last week British PM Boris Johnson was obliged to switch to running the country from isolation after testing positive for the virus. Infections have now exceeded 770,000 cases worldwide, killing more than 37,000, with the United States, Italy and Spain overtaking mainland China, where the virus originated late in 2019, in confirmed cases.