The Japanese government has decided to extend the state of emergency by three weeks until June 20, less than a month from the start of the Tokyo Olympics. The current provision in force in 9 prefectures, including the capital itself and the city of Osaka, would last until May 31: “The infection curve is decreasing in some areas but overall the situation remains unpredictable,” he said. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. A decision that casts even more shadows on the Tokyo edition, also considering the request of the head of the doctors’ union (Japan Doctors Union), Naoto Ueyama: to cancel the Olympics, considered “extremely dangerous” for the situation in Japan in the midst of “fourth wave” of coronavirus infections.
Not only that: in Japan the fear is that of being the cradle, during the Games, of what they have called the “Olympic Strain”. According to Naoto Ueyama, the holding of the Olympic Games could lead to the development of a new strain of Covid-19: “All the different strains of the virus could be concentrated and collected here, in Tokyo – said the doctor at a press conference – We cannot exclude the possibility that a new strain of the virus could be born after the Olympics ». An ominous prospect that, according to Ueyama, “would translate into a huge tragedy, an event that would be the subject of criticism for even 100 years”.