SAPPORO -- The organizing committee for the Tokyo Games is asking members of the public not to gather in Sapporo to watch the marathon and race walk events scheduled to take place from Thursday to Sunday, to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
The committee will strengthen measures such as restricting access to some sidewalks and increasing the number of volunteer wardens who will urge passersby not to congregate on sidewalks.
At a press conference in Sapporo on July 27, Yasuo Mori, deputy head of the committee's Games Operations Bureau, said, "We want to ask people once again to refrain from watching the events along the route."
A test event held in the city in May attracted crowds of spectators, despite calls from the committee asking the public to refrain from gathering on the streets.
A team of about 770 people was deployed at the event, and loudspeakers were used to urge people not to congregate.
The committee plans to fence off the starting and finishing points of the marathon near Odori Park and an area around the former Hokkaido government office building, all of which are areas that are usually crowded with local residents and visitors.
The committee will also use cones to make the sidewalk narrower on the city's main street, Sapporo Ekimae-Dori, which will make it more difficult for people to stop and watch the events.
About 2,000 volunteers will be tasked with preventing people from gathering on the streets, more than double the number that was deployed during the test event.
Hokkaido logged 267 cases of novel coronavirus infection on Sunday, marking the fifth consecutive day the tally exceeded 200. Emergency-level priority measures were issued for Hokkaido on Monday in response to the latest surge in cases.
The number of people at Sapporo Station on weekends from May 16 to June 20, when Hokkaido was under a state of emergency, was 40% to 60% lower than during the January-February period last year before the spread of the coronavirus, according to NTT Docomo, Inc.'s Mobile Spatial Statistics, which uses anonymous mobile phone location information to estimate population flows.
However, after the latest state of emergency was lifted in Hokkaido, the number of visitors increased considerably, and foot traffic has increased to levels higher than before the pandemic in some cases.
With the world's best long-distance runners competing, the Olympic marathon events are expected to be one of the biggest draws.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I'd like to watch the runners along the route somehow," said a 70-year old Sapporo resident. A senior official of the Sapporo city government expressed fears that "infections will spread even further if people from within and outside the city gather to watch events."
About 1,100 people involved in the Games are expected to visit Sapporo for the events, including athletes and officials.
The organizing committee will deploy security personnel at about 10 hotels where people involved in the Games are staying to ensure the guests only travel to training and event sites during their stay in the city.
To ease the concerns of athletes who have complained about the restrictions, the committee has introduced a service through which Olympic visitors will be able to order food and other things online that will be delivered to their hotels.
Training sites will also have mobile catering facilities, offering Hokkaido specialties such as lamb barbecue, deep-fried chicken and ice cream.
"We want to show our spirit of hospitality as much as possible while implementing measures to curb people's movements," a senior official of the committee said.
During the Olympic cycling road races and triathlon events held in and around Tokyo in July, people were asked to refrain from gathering on sidewalks to watch the athletes, but crowds formed at some spots along the routes. During a triathlon event in Tokyo's Odaiba district on July 31, barriers along the route and Olympic volunteers with placards urging people to refrain from gathering failed to deter the crowds that turned up to take photos of the athletes.
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