THAT WON’T RUIN OUR RUN
Mayor says marathon will go on despite coronavirus fears
Mayor Martin Walsh brushed off the idea of scaling back or shutting down the Boston Marathon over coronavirus fears, saying that despite fears the disease could turn into a pandemic, the April 20 race should be able to go ahead.
“I think that’s an overreaction,” Walsh told reporters Tuesday in a restaurant in Chinatown. “I think we have to be very careful in overreacting to a situation that isn’t there.”
The mayor noted that there’s only one confirmed case of the virus in Boston, and that person is being treated. He added, “In Boston, it shouldn’t affect our marathon.”
The Boston Athletic Association told the Herald Monday it’s “carefully monitoring” the spread of coronavirus ahead of the 124th running of the world’s oldest annual marathon. That came after another major race, Japan’s Tokyo Marathon, announced Monday that it will only let elite athletes run, shutting out tens of thousands of runners in an effort to reduce the risk of mass contagion — a move a doctor has told the Herald the BAA also should consider.
“The Boston Athletic Association is carefully monitoring developments related to the coronavirus,” the BAA said in a statement on Monday. “We will continue to closely follow updates from organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Public Health, and World Health Organization, and will adhere to any policies put forth by the federal government.
“We have no further comment at the moment but will continue to monitor the situation carefully,” the BAA said.
In Tokyo, only a few hundred elite runners and wheelchair racers will be allowed to participate in the March 1 race, drastically reducing the field from an expected
Tokyo race officials said in a statement Monday, “We have been preparing for the Tokyo Marathon 2020 while implementing preventive safety measures, however, now that case of COVID-19 has been confirmed within Tokyo, we cannot continue to launch the event within the scale we originally anticipated.”
Registered runners will be allowed to defer their entry to next year’s Tokyo Marathon. More than 500 people in Japan have been infected with the coronavirus, and one has died from the virus.
So far there are 29 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, including 14 American evacuees from a Japan cruise ship who were returning to the U.S.
Those evacuees will be under 14 days of quarantine at a U.S. military facility.
More than 71,000 people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus, including at least 70,548 cases in China, mostly in the central province of Hubei, the home of Wuhan, the city that appears to be where the virus started. More than 1,700 people have died from the virus in China.