Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday officially announced that three more prefectures - Hokkaido, Okayama, and Hiroshima - will be placed under a COVID-19 state of emergency due to a recent spike in infections.

"Today, we decided to add Hokkaido, Okayama and Hiroshima to the area under the state of emergency from May 16 to 31," Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced at a virus task-force meeting.

The fresh declaration came just 10 weeks before the pandemic-delayed Olympic Games, scheduled to start on July 23.

But Suga noted on Friday that holding a "safe and secure" Olympic games was possible if tight preventive measures were implemented that would keep ordinary Japanese from coming into contact with those arriving in connection with the Games.

On April 25, Japan had already placed Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures under virus emergency. The prefectures of Fukuoka and Aichi were later added to the list earlier this month.

Those six areas will also come out of the alert on May 31.

(With input from agencies)

(Cover: A woman in kimono clad and pedestrians wearing protective face masks make their way at a shopping district on the first day of the country's third state of emergency, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, in Tokyo, Japan, April 25, 2021. /Reuters)