Tokyo Olympics finish: Record Sunday Covid-19 high and 13,244 waiting for hospital beds or help
Kanako Mita and Sawako Utusmi
Modern Tokyo Times
The Tokyo Olympics have just finished. However, the Olympics remain divisive because of the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis in Japan. Indeed, despite the State of Emergency, Tokyo witnessed new daily and weekly coronavirus highs during the Olympics.
Nobody who adores sport will deny that great athletic performances entailed. Equally, some of the track and field and swimming produced amazing world records. Similarly, wrestling to every sport at the Olympics produced high drama and dedicated athletes. Therefore, the sporting angle was a treat for international sporting fans.
However, for Tokyo, under a coronavirus state of emergency, the Olympic bubble could never be that irrespective of the words of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Likewise, Japan would feel the convulsions of televised normalcy, media outlets over-focusing on sport, individuals feeling cheated by elites enjoying the games in person, and political elites in Japan squandering vast sums at a time when so many people are feeling the economic convulsions of the coronavirus.
Hence, during the Olympics, endless new daily coronavirus highs occurred regionally and nationally. This concerns Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and other parts of Japan. Tokyo also hit new terrible daily high coronavirus infections. Therefore, the health care system is once more under severe strain.
Tokyo now faces a hospital waiting and consultation list of 13,244. At the same time, 17,812 people are recovering at home. Also, 1,908 people are at designated hotels that help people with coronavirus symptoms. Thus, the health care system in Tokyo – and other parts of Japan – is now under enormous strain again.
The number of daily coronavirus cases in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama shot up just before the Olympics and increased dramatically during the games. In Tokyo, the seven-day PCR positivity rate shot up to a high of 22.3 percent during the last week of the Olympics. Therefore, tens of thousands of people in Tokyo – and throughout Japan – have caught coronavirus at the highest rate since this virus first entered the country in the middle of January last year.
Hence, despite Suga and Koike claiming the Olympics went smoothly, the opposite happened health-wise and concerning the health care system now being under enormous strain.
Athletes have now returned home to their respective countries. However, for people in Japan, the Olympic convulsions of the coronavirus are continuing and soon more deaths will be recorded.
The same obviously applies to the health care system and debt generated by the games, which will be paid by taxpayers who were banned from going to Olympic venues. Therefore, the real winners – apart from athletes – are media sponsors of the Olympics and the IOC that will rake in huge revenues.
Lee Jay Walker says, “The losers are people who caught coronavirus in increasing numbers based on the perception generated by the Olympics, the Japanese health care system, people who will die (often a time lag of one week to a few weeks before deaths increase), taxpayers because of the debt generated and money squandered, workers who face an increasing psychological struggle, and companies in sectors already hit hard by the coronavirus.”
No Olympic ideals – just crude business and political blindness during an horrendous international coronavirus crisis that is ongoing.
https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/ – Tokyo Metropolitan Government website for updates about the coronavirus crisis in Tokyo.
https://toyokeizai.net/sp/visual/tko/covid19/en.html – Japan and Tokyo Covid-19 news with more analysis
https://covid19japan.com/ – Japan regional coronavirus statistics
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ World coronavirus statistics
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