Up to 68,000 spectators a day would crowd Tokyo’s Olympic-themed waterfront area if their numbers are limited to 5,000 for each competition venue during the Summer Games, an Asahi Shimbun study showed.

The estimate does not include visitors without tickets who may visit the area, which has been designed to provide an “Olympic experience” for all people.

Seven competition venues are located within a 1.5-kilometer radius in the waterfront area of Koto Ward.

Olympic organizers and government officials have yet to decide on whether the Summer Games will be staged with spectators during the continuing novel coronavirus pandemic. Overseas spectators have already been barred from attending.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga wants audiences in the stands at the Games, according to officials with the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.

Health experts, however, said that if fans can attend the events, there should be a cap on their numbers for each venue.

Government officials are expected to decide on the spectator issue by June 20, when the COVID-19 state of emergency is scheduled to be lifted for Tokyo and nine prefectures.

Under the state of emergency, sports and other events have been held with spectators based on the rule that only 50 percent of the venue can be filled, and the number of people must not exceed 5,000.

If a similar rule is used for the Summer Olympics, a maximum total of more than 3 million people are expected to attend the events, excluding the marathons and track and field competitions, according to the Asahi calculations.

The crowd estimate was based on the competition schedule and the capacity of each venue published by the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.

Competitions will be held in the capital and nine other prefectures over 19 days.

The calculations showed that up to 68,000 spectators will attend competition events at the seven venues in the waterfront area on July 25, the first Sunday after the Opening Ceremony on July 23.

Overall, around 700,000 people are projected to show up at the seven venues during the Games through Aug. 8.

However, many more are expected to visit the area, which the International Olympic Committee and other organizers named “Tokyo Waterfront City.”

It was set up under the concept of fusing a city and sports and to give visitors without tickets an Olympic experience.

An Olympic flame cauldron, separate from the one at the National Stadium, the main Olympic venue, will be placed on the Dream Bridge connecting the Ariake and Odaiba districts in the area.

The area also features a recreational walking path of about 2 km, a zone for skateboarding and 3x3 basketball, which will make their debuts as Olympic sports in Tokyo, pavilions of official sponsors, and a large shop selling Olympic-related goods.

Before the pandemic, the Odaiba Marine Park on the waterfront was visited by fewer than 10,000 people a day in July, according to park managers.

Officials at the organizing committee and the Tokyo metropolitan government are working on measures to prevent congestion there during the Olympics.

But their policy to open the area to the general public remains in place.

Details of the measures are expected to be announced later.

Tetsuya Matsumoto, a professor of infectious diseases at the International University of Health and Welfare, stressed the urgency of restricting crowd sizes at places where people will likely gather, saying spectators from all over Japan will come to Tokyo during the Games.

“If spectators go straight home after watching the competitions, they will be less likely to impose risks in terms of transmitting the virus,” he said. “But the Olympic Games are, simply put, a ‘festival.’ They will tend to linger in the waterfront area if various events by official sponsors are staged. If other crowds join, the infection risk will heighten.”

Shigeru Omi, chairman of the government’s expert panel responding to the pandemic, and his colleagues will soon issue a report on the assessment of the infection risks in Tokyo when the Olympics and Paralympics are held and measures to reduce the risks.

(This article was written by Daisuke Maeda and Hiromi Kumai.)