After the re-imposition of the corona emergency for Tokyo, the Olympic organizers decided to exclude all spectators from the competitions in Japan’s capital. This was announced by the Japanese hosts after consultations with the International Olympic Committee on Thursday.
“We had no other choice,” said Seiko Hashimoto, head of the organization. Until recently, the organizers of the Olympics had stuck to their plans to allow up to 10,000 domestic fans per competition in the arenas. This hope has now been shattered. In Tokyo and in three neighboring prefectures, the arenas will remain empty during the games. Foreign viewers had already been banned from entering the country in March.
Before the organizers’ short-term consultations on Thursday, the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga decided to declare a state of emergency again for the time of the Olympic Games. The measure will apply from next Monday until August 22, it said. The Tokyo Summer Games are scheduled to take place from July 23rd to August 8th. The reason for the now fourth state of emergency for Tokyo are again significantly increasing numbers of infections.
The main aim of the state of emergency is to prevent restaurants and bars from serving alcohol. Singing karaoke should also be stopped in order to get the spread of the virus under control. Citizens should stay at home if possible. Many people in Japan fear that the games could turn into a super-spreader event.
Japan’s Olympic organizers and the IOC have always emphasized that everything will be “safe”. IOC President Thomas Bach arrived in the Olympic city on Thursday and went into a three-day quarantine in a five-star hotel in the city center. One will show responsibility and “support all measures that are necessary for safe games for Japan’s population and the participants”, affirmed Bach at the beginning of the deliberations on the audience question.
On the day of his arrival, Tokyo city authorities reported 896 new cases of infection. The number of new infections has now been 19 days above the value on the same day of the previous week.