Can the Olympic bubble hold?
Outside the ‘parallel world’ of the Olympic Village, Covid-19 rages in the streets of Tokyo, write Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida
Outside the Tokyo Olympics bubble, the coronavirus situation in Japan has never been worse. Both the city and the country reported record numbers of new infections on Thursday as the Delta variant outpaced vaccinations, straining the healthcare system.
Inside the bubble, a handful of new cases continue to emerge every day. The most prominent one yet, involving world champion polevaulter Sam Kendricks, came Thursday, knocking him out of the Games and briefly sending dozens of other athletes into isolation.
All along, Olympic organisers have insisted these two worlds, inside the bubble and outside, can be kept sealed off from each other, with neither posing a significant risk to the other. But as the Games approach their midway point, the promises of a “safe and secure” Games are being put to the test.
Japan was set to expand the coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo to neighbouring areas and the western city of Osaka yesterday.
A government panel approved the plan, putting Saitama, Kanagawa and Chiba, as well as Osaka, under the state of emergency from Monday until August 31. The measures already in place in Tokyo and the southern island of Okinawa will be extended until the end of August.
Five other areas, including Hokkaido, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka, were to be placed under less-stringent emergency restrictions.
Tokyo has reported a record rise in cases for three days in a row, including 3865 on Thursday. The cases have doubled since last week, and officials have warned they may hit 4500 a day within two weeks.
Officials said 2995 were hospitalised, about half the current capacity of 6000 beds, with some hospitals already full.
More than 10,000 others were isolating at home or in designated hotels, with nearly 5600 waiting at home while health centres decide where they will be treated.
At yesterday’s meeting of government experts, Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said the spike in Tokyo, despite being under the state of emergency for two weeks, is an “alarming development that is different from anything we have seen before.”
Nationwide, Japan reported 10,687 confirmed cases on Thursday, exceeding 10,000 for the first time. It has recorded 15,166 fatalities from Covid-19, including 2288 in Tokyo, since the pandemic began.
Olympic organisers insisted there was no connection between the Games and the rising numbers, saying that the bubble they had created to isolate athletes, coaches, officials and staff from the general public remained intact.
Fewer than 200 positive cases have been recorded among Olympics-related personnel, including 23 in the Olympic Village and 23 athletes. More than half of the Olympics-related cases are among people who live in Japan. Additionally, infections have been reported among 14 police officers who were working security at the Games.
Describing those in the Olympic bubble as the “most tested community almost anywhere in the world,” Mark Adams, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, told reporters the athletes “really are living in a parallel world.”
He said that “there is not a single case” in which athletes or anyone from the Olympic movement had spread the virus to the general public in Tokyo. Just two people associated with the Olympics have been hospitalised, Adams said, with all others being treated by medical staff within the Olympic Village.
Some who have become infected have described their treatment as less than pleasant. Members of the Dutch delegation, including two athletes, have complained about the severity of their quarantine restrictions. They have described their rooms as “little boxes” and said they were not allowed to see daylight.
Dr Richard Budgett, the medical director for the Tokyo Games, said the measures were necessary to prevent infection from spreading.
“To be in an isolation hotel is really hard however wonderful the conditions are,” he said at a news conference. “In the end, under the regulations they have to be isolated, so there is no getting around that.”
Despite the measures, there were signs that the Olympic bubble was more porous than officials have admitted.
Outside Shibuya Station, a tourism hot spot in one of Tokyo’s most crowded neighbourhoods, Thay Camargo, 25, who is representing a small Brazilian online broadcasting agency at the Games, said that she was visiting shops and going out at night despite working in Olympic venues every day. Journalists at the Olympics are working under tight restrictions that limit them to their hotels and the competition venues during a 14-day quarantine period.
“I was so excited to have this opportunity to come,” said Camargo, who said she had finished her 14-day quarantine. “I’ve always wanted to be in Japan and explore.”
Experts suggested that the presence of the Games in Tokyo was having the psychological effect of making the public believe they could relax, even if under an emergency declaration.
Some restaurants, despite being asked to close by 8pm and refrain from serving alcohol, are openly defying the appeals. At a pub in Shibuya, a sign out front declared: “You can drink here! Open until midnight.” Other bars were hosting Olympics viewing sessions.
Fumie Sakamoto, an infection control manager at St Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, said she saw no concrete indication that the virus was “being transmitted by people coming from abroad to the general public in Tokyo”.
But, she added, “there might be some psychological influence because every day what we see on TV is we watch the Olympic Games, and it’s hard to imagine that we’re in the middle of the biggest wave of infections in Tokyo”.
Members of the public have thronged the area around the Olympic Stadium, lining up to take photographs in front of a statue of the Five Rings. And spectators lined the route of cycling races over the weekend.
With just a little over a quarter of the Japanese population fully vaccinated, the Delta variant has been able to take root. More than three-quarters of cases in Tokyo are now being caused by that highly contagious version of the coronavirus.
Vaccination rates among older residents are much higher: More than 70 per cent of those older than 65 have been fully inoculated.
As a result, most new infections in Tokyo are among those in their 20s and 30s, whose vaccination rates are much lower.
The failure of Japan to accelerate its vaccination rollout in time for the Summer Games was difficult to comprehend, critics said.
“For a country that was hosting the Olympics and for a prime minister who was gambling his fate on the success of the Olympics,” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo, “not to be able to vaccinate on time” when other affluent countries had done so “is mind-boggling”.
Although severe cases in which patients require ventilators remain relatively low, the chairman of the Japan Medical Association, Toshio Nakagawa, said that it had become difficult to secure ambulances to transport patients in major cities and warned that hospitals were running out of beds.
And in an interview with Shukan Bunshun, a weekly newsmagazine, Hiroshi Nishiura, an infectiousdisease specialist in the medical school at Kyoto University, said that the dearth of hospital beds might make it difficult to stage the Paralympics next month.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is facing an election this year, at first did not acknowledge the rise in infections this week.
Then, yesterday, he maintained that there was no connection between the Olympics and the surge.
Suga asked the public to watch the Games in their homes and said that the government was considering expanding and extending the state of emergency.
It is not clear that such measures have much effect any more.
Yesterday, Aika Suzuki, 22, said that she was planning to meet a friend to go out to dinner.
“I think none of my friends care about the state of emergency any more,” Suzuki said. “I have been going out as usual.”
She said she had opposed the Olympics at first, “but now that the events have started and I can watch them on TV with my family, it is exciting”.
“I think that many people feel this way,” Suzuki added.