Translator tokyo is on the brink of an explosisive increas of infections. We are trying to prevent a situation like that andnd t try to prevent further spread of virus levels. This is needed now. There are more than 2,100 confirmed cases across japan. Not including 712 cases from the diamond princess cruise ship. A total of 70 people have died including 11 from the cruise ship. Meanwhile, japan is set to further restrict entry into the country. Nhk has learned that the new measures will apply to the 49 countries and territories. The u. S. , canada, china and south korea as well as most of europe and some parts of Southeast Asia will be affected. Once the measures are in place, foreign nationals from a total of 73 countries and regions will be banned from entering japan. The restrictions also apply to people who have visited the designated countries within the past two weeks. Translator we have decided to raise the warning level for Infectious Diseases in response to the rapid spread of the coronavirus and the rise in serious infections. The ministry is advising japanese citizens to avoid all nonessenential travel abroad. Officials are particularly concerned about travel to countrtries named in the new measures. Beijing is also tightening border controls. The new Restrictions Mean that almost all japanese citizens are banned from entering the country. The Chinese Government had suspended the visa waivers unless they were traveling for businesses or to see relatives, but starting tuesday, those trips will also be prohibited. The move comes days after beijing imposed a widereaching ban on foreign nationals entering the country. The japanese government says cabinet ministers will no lononr attend every task force meeting. It is aimed at reducing the infections. Translator people talk in close proximity during anticoronavirus task force meetings. While the Prime Minister will attend every meeting, the deputy Prime Minister will not. Nishimura added that the government is considering applying the measure to other types of meetings as well. The death of comedy star shimura is causing people to take the coronavirus more seriously. Reporter he had long been one of the nations most recognizable comedians. He rose to stardom in the 1970s as part of drifters, a group that entertained for decades with a hugely popular 1970 saturday night variety show. He won the hearts of viewers with his iconic characters and trademark physical comedy. That unique brand transcended language barriers, gaining him fans throughout asiaia. One of his programs eveven inspireded the creation of americas funniest home videos. The long running u. S. Program tweeted its condolences. Thanking him for always making people laugh. His management says afteter the icon contracted the coronavirus, his condition quickly worsened, progressing from fatigue to pneumonia and finally death, all within two weeks. Health experts say it should be a cautionanary tale. Translator i think all of society, including young people, need tththink out t hoto prevent paenents fm bebecong seseously ill. Reporter but some young people seem to be defying government calls to refrain from nonessential weekend outings. Theres hope that shimuras death will change that attitude. Translator i didnt take the situation very seriously, even though new cases are reported every day. It didnt affect anyone i know. But i feel scared now that a famous person like him has died. This popular japanese youtuber told followers, keeping others safe is one way to pay tribute to their idol. Translator i want them to imagine what it would be like if they were infected and spread this v virus to loved ones. If someone dies because of them, they will reregret it. They should spend each day considering that. Reporter as the coronavirus spreads people across japan will continue to mourn the comedy legend. Now also a symbol of the growing pandemic. Nhk world, tokyo. New york state Governor Andrew Cuomo has appealed for help from Health Care Workers across the state to fight the outbreak of coronavirus in his state. If you dont have a Health Care Crisis in your community, please come help us in new york now. The remarks come amid a surge of infections in the u. S. The u. S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention says as of sunday the country had over 140,000 confirmed cases, the most in the world. The death toll stood at 2,405. Nearly half of the cases or over 66,000 were reported in new york state where securing enough hospital beds, ventilators, and medical workers is becoming an urgent problem. A u. S. Navyospital ship has arrid to helout. It c can aommomoda up to 1,000 patientsts andts expectcted to start treatingng people with otr diseases starting on tuesday. The pentagon has signed a deal for an additional 8,000 ventilators to deal with the dire shortage of the devices. Mayor bowser has a request for everyone to stay home or face a fines of up to 5,000. President trump said on monday social distancing guidelines might be toughened. We may add a few more. The guidelines will be much as but maybe toughened up a little bit. But theyre having a big impact. The president is accused of playing down the pandemic in the early stages. A cruise ship off panama is asking the colombian government to let passengers with serious symptoms to disembark on one of its islands. The zaandam was carrying more than 1,800 passengers and crew and the cruise was due to end in chile e on march 21, but it changed course after the coronavirurus. A coupuplerorom the u. S. S. Stat new jersey were on the sp. They s spoke to o nhk on m monda they saidd the zazaandam is n waiting off a colombian island. Ththey were told thahat talks w under way to let the seriously ill disembark. The husband says he and his wife were amongng a group of passenes wiwith no sysymptoms who were transferred to another cruise ship on sunday. There was the cdc saying you shouldnt go on cruises but that was after we had already boarded. We were on a cruisise. On the 22nd we were advised by the captain of the zaandam ththat due t to overwhwhelming precautions and so forth that we were goioing to beononfined totr state rooms. There are reports that hundreds of people on the ship are displaying symptoms. Florida Governor Ron Desantis does not want the ship to dock in his state. He said on monday that florida cannot afford to have passengers dumped and using up their valuable resources. China hasnt included the number of asymptomatic cases in their previous tallying of cases but is moving to disclose the number as researchers say such patients are nearly as likely to transmit the disease as those with symptoms. A team at t a disease cocontrol based in eastern china studied over 2,000 people who had close contact with patients presenting symptoms and those who didnt. The infection rate was 6. 3 and 4. 1 respectively. A detatail they sasay is sisignificantly insignificant. Ststate media are reporting tha li keqiang is tightening controls around those who are asymptomatics. He said on monday that the information of such patients must be disclosed as soon as they are detected. Li added there needs to be an inquiry with people who contacted patients with asymptomatic symptoms as well. Moving to thailand where the declaration of a state of emergency last week has seen businesses and temples extending a helping hand to those in need. In bangkok, stores have been ordered to close from march 22nd to the end of april. Only those selling food and other daily necessities are allowed open. To help those who lost jobs, a chicken rice chain has started offering a meal for free. The meal usually costs about 65 cents. Translator i have no choice but to rely on shops like this because i have little money left. Some buddhist temples are also offering meals to jobless people. With the while these efforts spread concern is mounting inside the country that more jobs may be lost. Stricter border controls are likely to hit thailands Tourism Industry hard. With foreign tourist receipts making up about 11 of thailands gdp, tourism has been a key driver of economic growth. International sports bodies have started to rearrange next years schedules to make way for the Tokyo Olympics and paralympmpics, postponed due to the pandedemic. On monday, it t was decided the games will open on july 23, 2021. In tokyo the main countdown clock has been reset accordingly. World athletics have announced ththat it will delay the championships until 2022. They were scheduled to open in the United States in august next year. The International Swimming federation is reviewing the dates for its World Championships which were scheduled for july 2021 in western japan. The sporting body said it will consult with others to work out the situation. And the world badminton is discussing new dates with the host nation spain. A Japanese Government Panel warns tokyo could be brought to a stand still in the future because of a largescale eruption of mt. Fuji. The iconic volcano hasnt erupteted for more than 300 yea. Volcanic ash w would reach kanagawa and chiba and saitama in three hours. Eveven a small amoununt would d thrailway system to malfunction. The chief examiner said the Transportation Networks are particularly vulnerable and would severely l limit peoples movements. Translator mt. Fuji used to erupt once every 30 years but it hasnt happened for three centuries now. It can happen at any time but no steps have been taken. The panel is calling for measure to be drawn up sooner rather than later. Its time now for World Weather with sayaka mori. So people in tokyo had a relatively dry and chilly day here on tuesday. But a spring storm is on the way and what can we expect . Yes, tokyo will likely see heavy rainfall that can lead to flooding and strong winds. So you may want to wear rain boot or rain gear. A spring storm is now headed to western japan. You can see clouds developing in the south of the country. This is a low pressure system which is expected to hit towards western japan into wednesday morning. It will rapidly intensify the coastal areas might see thunderstorms and even hail on wednesday. Rain will also spread to central japan. Watch out for flooding as well as landslides and for tokyo the peak is wednesday night. Watch out for that. The temperatures wont be too low this time. Tokyos high will be 14, thats a couple of degrees warmer compared to on tuesday. It will be warming up to 17 in osaka with rain and in the double digits in northern japan as well. Sapporo 14 degrees on tuesday, making it the warmest day of the season so far. It will be another warm day as we go into wednesday. Migratory birds are taking a rest in hokkaido. Every winter swans from siberia fly to the main island of japan to spend the colder season down south as the weather warms up in the spring. These birds make their trip to northern japans hokkaido, on tuesday. This year aboutut 3,000 swans me the trip, about ten days earlier than normal. The swans will likely stay in hokkaido into mid april. And talking about warm weather, Cherry Blossom season will likely come much earlier than japan. The flowers are bloom on april 23rd. Nearly ten days earlier than the average timing. P with the next couple of weeks thee c Cherry Blossom season w begin in the northern places of the tohoku region. Clockwise, an intense system is covering northern europe. This caused the highest pressure ever observed for the month of march the other day. This is showing cool air from the north, so temperatures are going to be quite low on tuesday but things are warming up slightly as we go into wednesday. Now, we still have an ample moisture across the peninsula. Heavy snow over the mountains and in the lowlying areas as we go into tuesday. Temperatures are going to be in the Single Digits in warsaw as well as kiev and in the double gits inn the south. Thats it from me. Stay safe. Before we wrap up, countries battling the virus are finding ways to send a big thank you to Health Workers risking their lives on the front lines. In spain hospipital workers wer applauded by Police Officers and neighbors. A stay at home order is in place in the country. In egypt, authorities lit up one of the Great Pyramids to send a message thanking medical workers and to remind people to stay home. Officials say the illumination is a message of solidarity to all countries affected by the virus. In paris, the eiffel tower was glittering in support of the Health Workers displaying the word merci. Thats all for this hour on nhk newsline. Im Yoshi Ogasawara in tokyo. Thank you very much for watching and well have more news coming up. This is newsline biz. Im gene otani. The tokyo bank could be slowed for the first time in 44 years due to the coronavirus pandemic. The bank china will likely grow 2. 4 this year. Thats down sharply from 6. 1. 1 last year. It will be the slowest since 1976 at the end of the cultural revolution. Growth in 2020 could be just a tenth of a percent in a worstcase scenario. But the World Bank Sees some bright signs. It says china is starting to get back on track although a quick rebound is unlike i can. Fact tire activity ticked up. The National Bureau of statistics says its purchasing managing index for manufacturers rose to 52. Thats a big jump when it sank below 36. It separates growth from contraction. We are getting a look at how badly the pandemic is hurting the Tourism Industry. Overnight stays was 40 lower than last year. Preliminary data shows that there were 4. 9 million stays at hotel or other accommodation. Its the first time they saw the drop after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Occupancy is down 8 percentage points. Retail sales in japan rose in february as people stocked up amid rising fears about the coronavirus. Its the first gain in five months. Food and other Household Goods were especially in demand. The Economy Ministry says the preliminary figure was about 11. 2 trillion yen or 103 billion. Thats up 1. 7 from the same month last year. It was also the first uptick since september when consumers rushed out to shop before a rise in the consumption tax. Sales at drugstores and super markets all improved. Food, face m masks and toilet paper were the hot sellers. Health care workers are struggling with a shortage of ventilator as they battle pneumonia cause by the coronavirus. Japanese government officials are fearing a scenario at home so theyre reaching out to domestic medical device makers asking them to ramp up the ventilator production. This as japan braces for a surge in the number of patients. The ventilators and the other institutions are at more than 22,000 as of february an most are not being used, but an explosion in the number of pneumonia patients could quickly turn a surplus into a shortage. The governments call is targeting not only existing manufacturers but ones that used to make the devices. They are now being encouraged to resume production and it takes time for the makers to kick start such manufacturing as they need government approval. Theyre studying subsidizing some of the costs if the Companies Make new Capital Investments for ventilator production. Communications are at the forefront of the fast changing wireless world. Lalast week, 5 g w was rolled o for commercial use in japan. These highspeed, High Capacity Networks could redefine how people interact with their smartphones and shake up entire industries. Reporter at this destruction site, a 5g test run is under way. The heavy machinery is controlled remotely from 200 meters away. The operator uses a video game hand set. He keeps an eye on the machinery through monitors. Digging up the earth and hauling it away is all done remotely. Thats possible thanks to the highdefinition imagages. Ththe 4g networks now widely in use n n be ait shaky. Y. Therefore,e, remote usese of industrial machinery iss limite to disasters and other locations ththat are hard to access. But 5g can transmit many more pixels of data and they can monitor the data with few hitches. Of the Construction Company envisions running the machines at several different sites from a single command center. That would be a huge advantage for an industry coping with the serious shortage o of labor. Translator if this Technology Evolves we may be able to operate heavy machinery and monitor safety from the office or home. We hope to manage our construction sites with fewer people. Reporter another company imagines a system that would connect multiple devices at the same time. This Major Electronics maker has plans for factories where robots would be controlled wirelessly. The engineers remove all their cables and run them from a tablet. On the current factory floor robots have so many cables attached that make them hard to move. One production line cacan normay only make a single product. But with 5g its possisible to n hundredsds of robotsts at the s time. Factory workers can move around the robots easily. This means the tv production line can be converted into one that makes smartphones. The easy retooling makes it quickly possible to adapt to market needs. The company has already had inquiries from more than 300 potential customers. Translator 5g is not just a network, its a new type of industrial infrastructure. We want to develop a wide raran of innovations and solutions. Reporter for now, 5g services are limited to japans bigger cities but theyre set to expand around the nation. That could mean big changes in how we live and work. All right. Lets have a look at the markets. From the newsline biz in tokyo, im gene otani. Thanks very much for joining us. Emmanueuel macron visits onef frances biggest protective mask sanctuaries. That hiser to show government is doing its utmost to buy covid19 a day after the country recorded his worst