Japan Just Declared a State of Emergency Affecting the 2021 Olympics

This week Japan declared a state of emergency prompting the Olympics to ban spectators at the events.

Olympics organizers will ban spectators from the games in Tokyo amid rising Covid-19 cases in the country.

The 2021 Olympics games had already been delayed for a year due to the pandemic and this is new setback.

The country’s state of emergency will begin Monday and will run through Aug. 22, while the games are scheduled from July 23 to Aug. 8.

Organizers had already banned international spectators from attending and had set a cap on domestic crowds at 50% of capacity, or up to 10,000 people.

Over 11,000 competitors are expected to travel to Japan to compete, along with thousands of officials and staff also set to attend.

The country has reported about 811,000 coronavirus cases and more than 14,800 deaths, according to data from the World Health Organization.

Only about a quarter of the population has had at least one COVID-19 shot, according to Reuters.

NBCUniversal is aiming to show more than 7,000 hours of content from the Tokyo Olympics across its networks and streaming platforms. It may look very interesting having no spectators in the crowds.