Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged Monday to strengthen health controls at airports. His comments came after a Ugandan Olympic team member tested positive for Covid-19 at the town hosting their training camp. This development has triggered concerns that the upcoming Tokyo Games will spread infections.
A Ugandan team member, reportedly a coach, tested positive Saturday at Narita airport here and was quarantined. But the rest of the nine-person team were allowed to travel more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) on a chartered bus to their pre-Olympics camp in the western prefecture of Osaka.
Three days later, a second Ugandan also tested positive for the virus, forcing seven town officials and drivers who had close contacts with the team to self-isolate. The team members were quarantined at a local hotel. Concerns escalated after it was announced that both Ugandans had the more infectious Delta variant of the virus.
In response to criticism, Suga rushed to Haneda international airport here to inspect virus testing for arrivals. He vowed to ensure appropriate border controls as growing numbers of Olympic and Paralympic participants enter Japan ahead of the July 23 opening of the Games.
The Uganda case illustrated that Japan’s border health controls can be easily breached, Tokyo Medical Association Chairman Haruo Ozaki said Sunday on ‘NHK’ public television. “Apparently the border controls are not adequate, even though there has been plenty of time to work on them,” he said.
Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said the entire team should have been quarantined at Narita airport.
Government officials initially defended the airport health controls as having properly detected and isolated the positive case. They said that contact tracing and isolation of those suspected of having had close contact was not their job but that of local health officials.
Experts have noted a significant increase in the movement of people in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas since the easing of a state of emergency June 21 and warned of signs of a resurgence of infections in the Tokyo region. Tokyo reported 317 new cases Monday, up from 236 from a week earlier. This is the ninth consecutive day of week-on-week increases, with a surge in cases of the Delta variant.
