Tokyo Olympics will be held without spectators in the Japanese capital due to rising cases of Covid-19. The decision was taken on Thursday after Japan’s Olympics Minister Tamayo Marukawa met with the officials and organisers.
As a reason for this, all the tickets are getting cancelled. An Olympic official in charge of ticket sales choked up with tears on Friday as he apologised to people who had their tickets cancelled because of a last-minute move to hold the Games without spectators in the Tokyo area due to the pandemic.
“We’ve done all we could to meet the expectations of those who had bought the tickets and I feel a deep sense of pain,” Hidenori Suzuki from the organising committee’s marketing department told a briefing explaining the procedures related to the cancellation of the tickets.
Japan announced a coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo amid rising Covid-19 cases from Monday, July 12 to August 22. The Olympic Games will be held through the state of emergency.
Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto had also apologised to the ticket holders from the country, saying the Games are heading towards a “very limited format.”
“It is regrettable that we are delivering the Games in a very limited format, facing the spread of coronavirus infections,” 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.”
The ban on spectators marks the latest blow to the troubled event, delayed by a year because of the pandemic and plagued by a series of setbacks, including massive budget overruns.
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