Tokyo Olympics venues will have no spectators

The Tokyo Olympics will take place without spectators, organisers said yesterday, as a resurgent pandemic forced Japan to declare a coronavirus state of emergency for the capital that will run throughout the event.

Although widely expected, the move marked a sharp turnabout from just weeks earlier, when organisers said they aimed to hold the global sporting showpiece with limited spectators.

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"It is regrettable that we are delivering the Games in a very limited format, facing the spread of coronavirus infections," Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto said following talks between government officials, Tokyo organisers and Olympic and paralympic representatives.

"I am sorry to those who purchased tickets and everyone in local areas."

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said it was essential to prevent Tokyo, where the highly infectious Delta Covid-19 variant was spreading, from becoming the source of another wave of infections.

The ban all but robs the Tokyo Games, which are scheduled to run from July 23 to August 8, of their last hope for pomp and public spectacle.

Once seen as a chance for Japan to stand large on the global stage after a devastating earthquake a decade ago, the showpiece event was delayed by the pandemic last year and has been hit by massive budget overruns.

Olympic Minister Tamayo Marukawa said organisers had agreed to hold the Games without spectators in Tokyo, and to decide according to the local situation for venues outside of the capital.

Medical experts have said for weeks that having no spectators would be the least risky option, amid widespread public fears that an influx of thousands of athletes and officials will fuel a fresh wave of infections, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian Games, which were due to take place in Vietnam this year, have been postponed because of the pandemic and will most likely be held in 2022, a member of the organising council said yesterday.

The regional Olympics were scheduled to be held in Hanoi and 11 other locations from November 21 to December 2.

In India, the count of active cases increased slightly to 460,704, after 45,892 new cases were recorded in the previous 24 hours, taking its infection tally to 30,709,557.

The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Kerala, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Sikkim, and Odisha have been reporting a jump in daily cases. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to chief secretaries of different states urging caution.

A new emergency response package worth Rs 23,123 crore to tackle the pandemic was announced by the central government, following the first meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's revamped cabinet yesterday.

The Australian government said it will rush 300,000 vaccine doses to Sydney -- in its third week of lockdown -- struggled to bring a Delta outbreak under control.

South Korea, once considered a coronavirus response model, reported nearly 1,300 new infections yesterday, the highest since the pandemic began.

But the worst of the Asian outbreaks is in Indonesia, which has become a global hotspot with death rates rising tenfold in a month to more than 1,000 on Wednesday.

Hospitals in the vast archipelago of 270 million have been pushed to the brink by the flood of coronavirus cases.

US CASES RISING RAPIDLY

Covid infections in England have quadrupled in a month since early June, a large prevalence study showed yesterday, ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan to fully re-open the economy in two weeks' time.

According to the research, led by Imperial College London, cases were estimated to be doubling every six days as a new wave fuelled by the Delta variant picks up pace.

French Junior European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune yesterday advised French people to avoid Spain and Portugal for their summer holidays, due to risks tied to the Delta variant.

The number of cases in Germany ticked up again yesterday after more than two months of steady decline and most new cases have been of the Delta variant since the end of June, according to official data.

Covid cases are also rising rapidly in the US as the Delta variant dominates and vaccinations stagnate, data showed on Wednesday.

The seven-day-average of new cases was 13,859 as of July 6, up 21% compared to two weeks earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cases attributed to the most recent days might rise further because of a reporting lag following the July 4 holiday weekend.