Tokyo Games fate hangs in the balance

Event likely to be canceled if virus not under control by next year, says official

The postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be canceled if the novel coronavirus pandemic cannot be brought under control by next year, said Yoshiro Mori, the organizing committee's president.

With the worldwide infection rate climbing and experts suggesting a vaccine is still a long way off, questions are being asked about whether the huge setpiece event might need to be delayed further.

"No. In that case, the Olympics will be scrapped," Mori said, but added that the Olympics will be held next summer if the virus is successfully contained.

Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya emphasized that organizers were focusing on next year as the new dates have been set and "our mission is to deliver the Games next year".

On Tuesday, 144 new cases were reported in Japan, taking the total number to 13,757. Meanwhile, the jobless rate in March rose to 2.5 percent, its highest in a year.

Atsushi Takeda, the chief economist at Itochu Research Institute, said the employment situation is "expected to worsen further in April" and now is still "the start of a deterioration".

Elsewhere in Asia, Singapore on Tuesday confirmed 528 more infections, the smallest daily rise in almost two weeks, taking the city-state's tally of cases to 14,951.

Most of the new cases are migrant workers living in dormitories.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday declared three days of lockdown in 31 provinces starting on May 1, as infections in Turkey exceeded 112,000.

Erdogan also said that the government was preparing a comprehensive program aimed at bringing life back to normal in the country, and its details would be shared with the public soon.

The country's first lockdown was imposed over April 11-12, followed by the second over April 18-19, and the latest one over April 23-26.

Turkey on Monday recorded 2,131 more cases and 95 more deaths, taking infections to 112,261 and deaths to 2,900.

In Australia, the state of New South Wales said on Tuesday that it would relax some restrictions on movement, as beaches reopened amid hope that a policy of widespread medical testing would help sustain a decline in new cases.

Bondi Beach and two neighboring beaches in Sydney were reopened to local residents on Tuesday after being closed a month ago due to large crowds breaking social distancing rules.

The state also said it would let up to two adults visit another person's home from Friday, relaxing a stay-at-home policy and ban on non-essential movement.

Australia recorded just one new case from an unknown source in the latest 24-hour period, suggesting community transmission had almost stopped, Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

Gradual easing

In Africa, Nigeria on Monday announced an immediate lockdown of northern Kano state, one of the states hit the hardest by COVID-19, while replacing a series of measures in some other states.

President Muhammadu Buhari announced a phased and gradual easing of lockdown measures starting from May 4 in the Federal Capital Territory and states of Lagos and Ogun, so as to allow "the restoration of some economic and business activities in certain sectors".

However, he said the easing measures would not apply to Kano, as in the state and indeed many other states that are recording new cases, preliminary findings show these cases are mostly from interstate travel and emerging community transmission.

A total of 1,337 cases had been reported in Nigeria as of Monday.

Meanwhile, the death toll on the African continent stood at 1,423 as the number of infections reached 31,933 on Monday.

Wang Xu in Tokyo, Xinhua and agencies contributed to this story.