TOKYO : Two people attending the Tokyo Olympics from overseas have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19, a Tokyo 2020 spokesperson said on Thursday, as daily cases in the host city and Japan as a whole hit new highs.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga denied there was any link between the games and the simultaneous rise in cases in the country. He said the government will decide on Friday whether to extend a state of emergency, already imposed on Tokyo and Okinawa, to additional regions, without saying where.
Such a declaration lets the authorities take extra measures such as shutting bars, although Japan has never ordered a full lockdown and most pandemic restrictions outside Tokyo’s “Olympic bubble” are voluntary.
Public broadcaster NHK reported that an emergency was set to be declared for three prefectures surrounding Tokyo and western Japan’s Osaka from Aug. 2-31, and extended in Tokyo and Okinawa to the end of August.
