Japan will lift its week-old “megaquake” warning later Thursday if there is no further major seismic activity, the disaster management minister said.

The alert last week prompted thousands of Japanese to cancel holidays and stock up on essentials, leading to bare shelves in some stores.

“If no particular change in seismic activity or crustal deformation is observed, at 17:00 (0800 GMT) today, the government will end the special call for attention,” said Yoshifumi Matsumura, minister of state for disaster management.

“The possibility of a major earthquake has not been eliminated,” he said, urging citizens to regularly check their preparedness “for the major earthquake that is expected”.

Last Thursday Japan’s weather agency said the likelihood of such an event was “higher than normal” after a magnitude 7.1 jolt earlier in the day that injured 14 people.

That was a particular kind of tremor called a subduction megathrust quake, which in the past have occurred in pairs and can unleash colossal tsunamis.

The advisory concerned the Nankai Trough “subduction zone” between two tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean, where massive earthquakes have hit in the past.

The 800-kilometre (500-mile) undersea trough runs from Shizuoka, up the Pacific coast from the Tokyo region — the world’s biggest urban area — to the southern tip of Kyushu island.