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In more news from Japan, the country’s economy contracted 1.3% in the three months to March after the government reimposed coronavirus restrictions in major cities as infections surged, data showed Tuesday.
The quarter-on-quarter fall came after the world’s third-largest economy grew for two quarters to December, but the expansion was stopped in its tracks by a winter increase in coronavirus cases.
A top medical organisation has thrown its weight behind calls to cancel the Tokyo Olympics saying hospitals are already overwhelmed as the country battles a spike in coronavirus infections less than three months from the start of the Games, Reuters reports.
The Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association representing about 6,000 primary care doctors said hospitals in the Games host city “have their hands full and have almost no spare capacity” amid a surge in infections.
“We strongly request that the authorities convince the IOC (International Olympic Committee) that holding the Olympics is difficult and obtain its decision to cancel the Games,” the association said in a 14 May open letter to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga which was posted to its website on Monday.
A jump in infections has stoked alarm amid a shortage of medical staff and hospital beds in some areas of the Japanese capital, promoting the government to extend a third state of emergency in Tokyo and several other prefectures until 31 May.
“The medical institutions dealing with Covid-19 have their hands full and have almost no spare capacity,” the medical association said in its letter.
Doctors would soon face the added difficulty of dealing with heat exhaustion patients during the summer months and if the Olympics contributed to a rise in deaths “Japan will bear the maximum responsibility”, it added.
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3yiu5QB
