While athletes from all over the world will be fighting for Olympic medals in Tokyo in just over two weeks, the residents of the capital will live under the conditions of a virus emergency.

According to Japanese media reports, the government will decide this Thursday to impose the fourth virus emergency on Tokyo since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The tightened measures against the corona virus should apply until August 22nd.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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    The Olympic Games, which will take place from July 23 to August 8, are threatened with completely foregoing spectators. A decision on the number of spectators is expected for today or for Friday among the parties involved. IOC President Thomas Bach arrives in Tokyo this Thursday and will be in hotel quarantine for three days. Foregoing spectators would be another blow to the sports festival, which was postponed by a year last year due to the corona pandemic. Foreign sports fans had already unloaded the organizers of the games months ago in consultation with the government. According to the current status, the virus emergency should end two days before the start of the Paralympic Games. This leaves the chance that spectators will be admitted to the Paralympics starting on August 24th.

    The incidence in Tokyo is 32

    The government had only slightly relaxed the anti-corona requirements in the capital in mid-June.

    Since then, however, the number of new infections has increased again.

    Tokyo reported 920 new virus infections on Wednesday.

    The last time the number was higher was on May 13th.

    Doctors such as the government's most important Corona advisor, Shigeru Omi, warn that with the increasing spread of the Delta variant, a fifth virus wave is threatening, especially at the time of the Olympic Games.

    Omi considers it desirable to forego spectators during the games.

    The 7-day incidence in Tokyo was last at 32, compared to 6 in Berlin.

    The number of spectators for the Olympic Games has already been reduced to 10,000 and a maximum of half of the seats available in the stadiums to protect against corona. Recently there were considerations among the organizers to limit the maximum number to 5000 and not to allow any spectators for evening events after 9 p.m. Under the rules of the expected virus emergency, it is now also in the room not to admit any more spectators in Tokyo or in the neighboring prefectures. That would also apply to the surfing competition on the Pacific coast in Chiba prefecture.

    Japan is already giving up many of the joys associated with the Olympic Games. The torch relay that will reach Tokyo this Friday has in fact been canceled. The Olympic flame will not be seen on public roads in the capital. There will only be one daily event at which the torch-bearers actually intended can present themselves. The torch relay should only take place as planned on the small islands that belong to Tokyo far off the coast. The governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, has already canceled public shows in parks or in public places for the games. The city of Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido, where the marathon is to take place, asked its residents to watch the sporting event on TV and not on the roadside.

    Virus emergency sounds more dramatic than it really is to the Japanese. The population is asked to prefer to stay at home and to work from home if possible. The most important restriction is that bars and restaurants should close at 8:00 p.m. and shouldn't serve alcohol during the day either.

    With around 810,000 infections and most recently 14,884 deaths, Japan has weathered the pandemic far better than Western countries. For comparison: Germany, with its population smaller by a third, has more than 3.7 million infections and more than 91,000 virus deaths. Japan threatens to gamble away the advantage because the vaccination campaign started later as a result of administrative delays and is still stuttering now and again. The country has only completely vaccinated 15 percent of the population, while in Germany it is almost 40 percent.