A global rise in the COVID-19, including Japan, has raised new doubts about the Tokyo Olympics Games, which were already postponed by a year in 2020, Japan minister on Thursday has said that the already delayed Tokyo Games may not go ahead this summer due to sudden new strain and rise in cases of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
“We need to do the best we can to prepare for the Games at this moment, but it could go either way,” Taro Kono, administrative and regulatory reform minister, said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference.
The Japanese government on Wednesday has announced an emergency outside Tokyo as the new COVID-19 strain exceeded more than 1,500 on Thursday, as per the NHK report.
The Japanese public’s appetite for the sporting extravaganza in a survey has warned that 77% of respondents in the survey said that it should be cancelled or postponed. But also the Games and the tourism, the financial support provides to the government are a top priority for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga
“The Japanese public are already more and more inclined to oppose the hosting of the Olympics this summer, and the state of emergency reinforces the perception that it is a lost cause,” said Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Suga has also stated that he would “take every measure” to protect lives of his citizens, adding to that he also added, all non-resident foreign nationals would be banned from entering Japan till the strict COVID measures are lifted
Suga and other authority members have said again and again that the decision of whether to go ahead with the International Olympic Committee and that their agreement to continue preparing.
“Anything is possible, but as the host of the Games we need to do whatever we can so that when it’s a Go, we can have a good Olympic Games,” Kono said in some of the strongest comments yet from a government minister about uncertainty over the Games. The Olympic Committee must be thinking about Plan B, Plan C. But the situation is not easy.”
Some health experts have also warned that hospitals are struggling to cope with the rise in cases of Covid patients and that a month-long, so-called “soft lockdown” is unlikely to have very much impact on case numbers.
“It’s very unlikely we’ll see cases go down after just a month,” said Yoshihito Niki, an infectious disease specialist and professor at Showa University hospital. “Japan has been called a success story and there’s been discussion about the so-called X factor – something that makes the Japanese more resistant to the virus – but that’s a complete fantasy.”
