The Tokyo Marathon cut more than 30,000 runners from the March 1 race.
Photo: /Associated PressTOKYO—Japan has begun suspending major public gatherings to counter the spread of Covid-19 as the number of new cases rises quickly and makes the country one of the biggest sites of infection outside China.
On Friday, the Tokyo metropolitan government said it wouldn’t hold large events such as school graduation ceremonies and entrance examinations for three weeks through mid-March, based on the advice of experts. The city of Osaka took a matching step.
Tracking the Coronavirus
- The death toll is more than 2,200.
- In mainland China, more than 75,000 people have been confirmed infected.
- The first two deaths were reported among former passengers on a cruise ship quarantined in Japan.
- South Korea and Iran reported their first deaths from the virus.
- In Beijing, clusters of infections raised concerns about the virus’s spread in hospitals.
- What We Know About the Coronavirus
A public speech by Emperor Naruhito scheduled for Sunday, his 60th birthday, was canceled, and businesses are curtailing large meetings. Honda Motor Co. said it was canceling any event with more than 100 attendees for the time being.
As of Friday, the health ministry said 93 people in Japan were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus that causes the disease known as Covid-19. That figure doesn’t include more than 600 people infected on a cruise ship docked at Yokohama. Three Japanese have died of the disease, including two from the ship.
“Now is an important time for efforts not to spread the infection,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a regular news conference. He said the government wasn’t mandating a ban on events but “asks people and businesses to cooperate.”
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has indefinitely postponed its annual party conference, initially scheduled for March 8. Many large companies typically hold mass recruitment events in the spring at the end of Japan’s academic year that are now being called off. Organizers of the Tokyo Marathon cut more than 30,000 public runners from the March 1 race, citing concerns about the spread of the virus.
Concert halls and movie theaters, meanwhile, haven’t yet made major changes to their operations, and rush-hour trains in Tokyo remain crowded.
Masahiro Kami, an infectious diseases expert, said he was skeptical that the suspension of some public events would have a significant impact on the spread of the virus. “Commuting on a packed train, for instance, is way worse than taking part in the Tokyo marathon,” he said.
Dr. Kami, who heads a nonprofit organization called the Medical Governance Research Institute, said a media focus on the few cases of serious illness from coronavirus infection in Japan had created a panic over the need to cancel events.
While Japan initially had a handful of cases involving people who had come from Wuhan, the center of the epidemic in China, or had direct contact with someone from Wuhan, a surge of cases in the past week included many whose path of infection wasn’t clear. The cases span from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the far south.
More than 1,000 people disembarked from the Diamond Princess cruise ship between Wednesday and Friday, and they entered Japan without restrictions on their movements. All of those passengers tested negative for the virus, but in some cases people have tested positive after a negative test—including two cases reported Friday in Australia, which sent a flight to Japan to repatriate citizens who had been on the ship.
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A plane carrying Canadian cruise passengers home landed Friday, as did one repatriating Israelis.
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One risk for Japan from the spread of the virus is disruption to the Olympics, scheduled to be held in Tokyo from July 24. Members of the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese organizing committee for the Games said last week the tournament would go ahead as planned, but on Thursday a test event for the Paralympics, which are set to take place after the Olympics, was postponed because of the virus.
The spread of the virus may also weigh on attendance at public parties in parks for Japan’s cherry-blossom viewing season. The latest forecasts suggest the blooming of the cherry flowers may peak in the Tokyo region in mid-March, much earlier than in typical years.
—Miho Inada and Suryatapa Bhattacharya contributed to this article.
Write to Alastair Gale at alastair.gale@wsj.com
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2020-02-21 10:57:00Z
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