The Fugaku supercomputer has calculated that there is close to zero infection risk for 10,000 spectators at the National Stadium, if proper measures are taken against the novel coronavirus.
The findings were announced by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry on Tuesday.
The National Stadium is located in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, and will serve as the main venue for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. A team of experts, including members of RIKEN, Japan, presumed that the community-acquired infection rate in Tokyo stood at roughly 0.1% and that 10,000 spectators were allowed onto the first floor of the stadium. Ten of those spectators were presumed to be infected.
The team had the supercomputer calculate how droplets would spread among the spectators, including virus-containing droplets, as they conversed with each other while looking forward, wearing masks and sitting with a vacant seat between them for four hours.
If the air-conditioning system functioned as designed, with the flow of air coming from behind the spectators, "close to zero" would be newly infected, the computer deemed. Even if there were no vacant seats between the spectators, the number of new cases would remain at 0.08, it said.
However, if air was flowing toward the spectators from the front, droplets from infected people would spread among spectators seated behind them, thus raising the risk of infections, the team found. If space was maintained between the spectators, there would be 0.23 cases of new infection, but if the spectators were seated close to each other with no vacant seat between them, the number would increase to 4.7, the supercomputer determined.
The analysis used the infectivity level of the original form of the novel coronavirus.
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