Guwahati: Japan will stage the Tokyo Olympics under a state of emergency and there will be no spectators at any of the games’ venues in the capital due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, Olympic minister Tamayo Marukawa said Thursday.
“Japan will stage the Tokyo Olympics under a state of emergency and there will be no spectators at any of the games’ venues in the capital due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases,” Olympic minister Tamayo Marukawa told Kyodo News.
The development comes after Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Thursday made a decision to place Tokyo under the fourth state of emergency for the duration of the upcoming Olympics to curb a recent rise in COVID-19 cases.
The Tokyo Olympics were postponed last year and are now scheduled to take place from July 23. The state of emergency will come into force on July 12 and will remain till August 22. “We are hoping to keep people from moving around during the summer break and the Bon holidays until vaccinations move further along,” Kyodo News quoted Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of the nation’s COVID-19 response, as saying.
According to Kyodo News, the Japanese government had initially planned to keep Tokyo under a quasi-state of emergency but had to change the decision due to a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
