▲ In December 2020, a sculpture of the Olympic five-ring mark was installed on the waters of Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. (Tokyo = AP/Newsis)
The Japanese government finally decided to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games scheduled for July and August this year without foreign spectators.
On the 9th, Kyoto News announced that government officials have concluded that it is impossible to receive overseas spectators, given public concerns about the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) and the spread of an overseas variant virus infection.
Accordingly, the Japanese government, the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) will hold video conferences next week and make a formal decision on how to hold them without foreign audiences. Earlier, the IOC announced that it plans to determine whether the Tokyo Olympics will accept overseas spectators by the end of March.
The Tokyo Olympics were originally scheduled to be held in July of last year, but have been postponed to the event on July 23 of this year due to the influence of Corona 19.
However, there are no signs that the spread of Corona 19 will subside, and voices are high that the Olympics must be canceled or postponed further. In a public opinion poll of the Yomiuri Shimbun released on the 3rd of this month, it was found that 6 out of 10 Japanese people did not want to hold the Tokyo Olympics.
As of 9:30 pm on the 9th, the cumulative confirmed cases of Corona 19 in Japan were 44,1706 (excluding Diamond Princess), and the cumulative death toll was 8,366. The number of new confirmed cases per day reached 8,000 in early January, then gradually decreased, and recently, it has remained around 1,000.