The Olympic torch relay for the postponed Tokyo Games will kick off in Japan's Fukushima on March 25 with social distancing measures, organizers said on Thursday, according to DPA news agency.
People are encouraged to watch the relay online and organizers are asking roadside spectators to wear masks and not to shout or cheer to curb the potential spread of the coronavirus.
The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee unveiled the measures that apply to the 121-day relay, which will start at the J-Village football training centre near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the site of Japan’s worst nuclear accident 10 years ago.
The guidelines "have been formulated to ensure protection for all those who participate in, support and watch the Olympic Torch Relay, as well as local residents," the organizers said in a statement.
The Olympic flame will be carried in turns by about 10,000 torchbearers across the nation’s 47 prefectures. The relay ends at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games on July 23.
Last week, Tatsuya Maruyama, the governor of the western prefecture of Shimane, said he was considering cancelling the relay in the region as he was dissatisfied with Covid-19 countermeasures employed by the central government and Tokyo’s city government.
Maruyama, whose prefecture has been largely unaffected by the pandemic, also opposed the holding of the Games.
"I believe it is unacceptable that the coronavirus spreads at the Olympics as a festival of peace," he told reporters.
About 80 per cent of the Japanese public said the postponed Tokyo Olympics and the Paralympics should be cancelled or rescheduled as the pandemic continues, according to the latest surveys.
A total of 10 prefectures, including Tokyo and its surrounding regions, have been under a state of emergency since early January due to a resurgence of coronavirus infections.
The government is expected to lift the measures in some prefectures soon.
Japan has so far escaped a virus outbreak on the scale seen in Europe and the United States, with a total of about 428,500 known infections and 7,647 Covid-19-related deaths, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
