Coronavirus outbreak update: Jan. 15, 2021

As of 11 p.m., Friday, Jan. 15

• Sea piracy and armed robbery in Asian waters jumped 17 percent last year compared with a year earlier, with a particularly high occurrence in the Singapore Strait, a Japan-led international center to combat the scourge said on Friday.
  
  
• The Philippines said Friday it has extended until the end of this month a travel ban on foreigners from Japan and other countries where a new, possibly more transmissible variant of the coronavirus has been confirmed.
  
  
• Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's administration is readying legislation to punish refusal to comply with government-mandated COVID-19 measures, amid concerns it may infringe too much on personal freedoms.
  
  
• The Hiroshima prefectural government in western Japan said Friday it is considering conducting free coronavirus testing of up to 800,000 people in the largest such testing campaign in the country, as it struggles to contain a recent rise in infections.
  
  
• Japan's Cabinet decided Friday to use 741.8 billion yen ($7.15 billion) in reserve funds for fiscal 2020 to increase subsidies for restaurants and bars cutting business hours following the latest emergency declaration over the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.
  
  
• U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Thursday that he is proposing a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan to change the course of the coronavirus pandemic and put the economy on track for recovery.

As of 11 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 14

• Japan's government has told sports bodies it will temporarily suspend the current entry exemptions that allow foreign athletes to enter Japan in order to train and compete ahead of this summer's Tokyo Olympics, a source with knowledge of the matter said Thursday.
  
  
• A group of experts from the World Health Organization on Thursday arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the novel coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, state-run media reported.
  
  
• Japan's coronavirus state of emergency could become longer and stricter, covering more prefectures if the outbreak does not show signs of abating, a minister and a government panel chief suggested Thursday, a day after the country expanded the measure to 11 prefectures.
  
  
• Japan's economy is in a "severe" situation and the pace of recovery will be moderate amid heightened vigilance against the coronavirus pandemic, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said Thursday.
  
  
• The Japan Rugby Football Union has decided to delay the start of the 2021 Japan Rugby Top League season due to multiple COVID-19 outbreaks among players and staff, sources close to the matter said Thursday.