Japan's Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe on Monday extended a nationwide state of emergency to May 31, saying the new
Coronavirus infection rate had yet to drop enough to justify ending measures aimed at slowing the outbreak.
In a nod to the risk those restrictions pose to the world's third-largest
economy, however, Abe promised to end restrictions earlier if experts advised him he could do so at a coronavirus task force due to meet on May 14.
Sitting next to Abe, his leading expert and adviser Shigeru Omi noted that infection rates were falling even as testing was expanded, but he admitted that
Japan was still only testing at around half of its daily capacity of 15,000.