Secretary-General of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party Toshihiro Nikai said on Thursday that the Tokyo Summer Olympics might be cancelled if the situation around COVID-19 worsened.
“If it turns out that [holding the Olympics] is practically impossible, we will have nothing but to give up the idea,” Nikai said, as quoted by the Kyodo news agency.
The Olympic Games in Tokyo were initially to be held in 2020 but postponed to July-August 2021 over the pandemic. The Japanese authorities announced a number of measures to limit the number of foreigners that will arrive in the country to visit the games.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. To date, more than 138.03 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 2.97 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Japan has confirmed more than 516,000 COVID-19 cases so far, with over 9,400 fatalities.
