Japanese towns drop plans to host Tokyo Olympic athletes due to COVID-19 surge

With the Tokyo Olympics just over two months away, 31 Japanese municipalities have decided against hosting overseas athletes and conducting cultural exchange programs, according to Kyodo News. The decision comes after a surge in COVID-19 cases in the country as well as globally.

In a first-of-its-kind program for the Olympics and Paralympics, 528 municipalities had registered to greet athletes from 184 countries, according to reports.

A delegation from East Timor was set to visit Ono City in Fukui Prefecture but later backed out. The British wheelchair basketball team and Russia’s fencing team called off their training camps in Japan. And on Wednesday, the United States Athletics Federation canceled its pre-Olympic training camp in Chiba Prefecture over concerns about the athletes' safety.

According to the news agency, the government has already started tracking the host cities that are not participating as planned.

#ReadySteadyTokyo @ParaAthletics test event! 🇯🇵👏Join Julián from the #Tokyo2020 team to explore the National Stadium, where 120 Japanese Para athletes, took centre stage. 🏟️@Paralympics #UnitedByEmotion pic.twitter.com/SvJjUBx8vr

— #Tokyo2020 (@Tokyo2020) May 12, 2021

“It is a shame they have decided to cancel, but I believe they made the best decision possible in the current situation,” Chiba governor Toshihito Kumagai said. The Japanese city was planning to host nearly 120 members from the US athletics team to provide them training facilities across three cities.

Earlier, the International Olympic Committee expressed their confidence about the country's measures to counter the deadly virus, stating that the Tokyo Olympics would be a historic event. World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe also praised the Games' organizing committee for staging a marathon test event a few days ago.

先ほど定例記者会見で例の五輪選手用の病床に関する質問がありました。私たちは県民と同様の扱いをする考えで、県民が使えない形で五輪用に病床を確保することは考えていません。なお、組織委は会場周辺の病院に大会指定医療機関の打診をしていますが、現時点で専用病床の確保要請はありません。

— 熊谷俊人（千葉県知事） (@kumagai_chiba) May 13, 2021

Anti-Tokyo Olympics petition gains thousands of signatures

Meanwhile, the anti-Olympic petition that was floated a week ago has garnered 346,596 signatures as of this writing. Aimed at IOC president Thomas Bach and Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga, the petition state that the Tokyo Olympics should be scrapped or postponed in order to save people’s lives.