Plans, test events change daily for postponed Tokyo Olympics
TOKYO—EACH day seems to bring another change to the Tokyo Olympics as surging coronavirus cases in Japan threaten planning for the games, which are to open in just over three months.
A leg of the torch relay on Wednesday was moved off the public streets in Matsuyama City in the Japanese prefecture of Ehime. It was to take place in a city park with “no spectators or stage performances,” an organizing committee statement said.
This followed the torch being detoured last week in Osaka—japan’s second largest metropolitan area—and run only in a city park.
Some legs of the relay will also being taken off the public streets on May 1 and 2 on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa.
The torch relay will feature a total of 10,000 runners crisscrossing Japan until it
arrives on July 23 at the opening ceremony in Tokyo. The relay began on March 25 in northeastern Japan and, though it has run with few incidents, organizers have cautioned that it may need to be rerouted as conditions change.
Osaka and Tokyo were expected to come under new emergency orders this week. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said Tuesday that measures needed to be taken “as soon as possible” to stem the spread.
Japan has attributed more than 9,600 deaths to Covid-19, good by global standards but poor by standards in Asia.
“If the coronavirus infection keeps getting worse, it’s no time to be holding the Olympics,” Kotaro Nagasaki, the governor of Yamanashi prefecture, said this week. Yamanashi is located just southwest of Tokyo and the home of famous Mount Fuji.