The central government has no immediate plan to again place Tokyo and Fukuoka under a state of emergency despite both areas seeing an increase in the number of coronavirus infections 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 numbers to increase rapidly, but will continue to carefully monitor the situation.

"We have not come to such a stage (reinstating a state of emergency)," Nishimura told a program on public broadcaster NHK.