La Jornada – Tokyo puts Ugandan delegation in quarantine after discovering a case of COVID-19

0

Tokyo Japanese local authorities announced that the Ugandan delegation, which arrived in Tokyo on Saturday to participate in the Olympic Games, has been placed in quarantine after discovering a positive case of Covid 19.

Contacts have been announced among the eight Ugandan team members, who were accompanying a coach who tested positive at Tokyo airport, and will be quarantined until July 3.

On Saturday, members of the delegation who tested positive were allowed to go to the association’s headquarters in Izumisano, near Osaka, while their coach was placed in isolation.

“Local doctors questioned the eight members and determined that they were close contacts with the person who tested positive,” an Izumisano official explained.

This is the first positive case of a game participant (July 23 – August 8), while the Australian softball team arrived in Japan on June 1.

On Saturday, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said all members of the Ugandan team had been vaccinated and tested negative in Uganda before their trip to Japan.

A month after the exhibition kicked off, the president of the Tokyo Games, Seiko Hashimoto, defended the organizers’ decision to allow spectators into the Olympic stadiums. Japanese doctors said on Friday that banning spectators was the least risky option, but they also included in their report recommendations on how to organize games with the help of assistants.

It will be a limited number of local fans who will be able to watch the games, in an effort by organizers to keep a bit of the spirit of competitions in which excessive cheering has been banned.

Organizers set a maximum of 50 percent of venue capacity, with a maximum of 10,000 people.

“We decided that it would be best to make the best preparations for the spectator games,” Hashimoto said, adding that the decision follows the recommendations of medical experts; “Of course, I understand that performing acting without a spectator will reduce the risk.”

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has not ruled out after holding the games without an audience if Tokyo returns to the state of emergency, which it exited on June 21.

Kyodo News reported that this precautionary decision contradicts games organizers’ permission to sell alcoholic beverages to spectators, drawing criticism from residents of the Japanese capital facing restrictions in bars to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Japanese bulletin stated that alcoholic beverages will be served in Olympic stadiums at limited hours.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *