A commemorative event involving roughly 15,000 spectators was held July 23 at the National Stadium in Tokyo to mark the first anniversary of the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics that went ahead while the COVID-19 pandemic was at its height.

The sports extravaganza will go down in history for having had almost no fans in seating areas other than dignitaries due to fears about the spread of novel coronavirus cases.

Sena Irie, who won a gold medal in women’s boxing, marched triumphantly into the stadium on July 23 joined by around 1,000 others, including other athletes and volunteers in the Summer Games, while spectators cheered.

The memorial event was held as Japan grapples with a seventh wave of infections that saw a record 200,975 new cases across the nation on July 23.

On the same day a year ago, the Tokyo Olympics kicked off amid a fifth wave that saw the capital placed under emergency curbs two weeks earlier.

The Sumer Games were supposed to have been held in 2020, but postponed by one year due to the pandemic.

One of the challenges facing the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee was how to host the event while not causing a surge in new cases.

Afterward, the committee gave itself a tap on the back for a job well done, saying its steps to prevent a spread of infections had worked well.

From July 2021 to Sept. 8, 2021, three days after the Paralympics ended, the number of confirmed infections among Olympians and staff from Japan and overseas totaled 869.

Committee officials stated in a report on its assessment of the Olympics that no cluster infections among Olympians and staff were confirmed by a public health care center.

They also said in the report they were not aware of any instance where officials involved in events were responsible for infections among the local population.

The report also gave high marks to the fact that only six foreign officials, far less than anticipated, were hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms after arriving in Japan.

“We were able to reduce the impact of the Olympic Games on local health care systems to a minimum,” the report stated.

Naoto Morimura, a professor of emergency medicine at Teikyo University and a member of a panel that advised the organizing committee on COVID-19 response measures, gave committee officials credit for ensuring appropriate measures were in place to prevent the spread of the virus despite a short preparation period.

But he questioned the committee’s claim that Olympics’ impact on health care systems was minimal.

“It is difficult to prove that the events indirectly affected the status of local health care systems,” he said. “But it is also difficult to prove that there was no impact.”

Tomoki Nakamori, head of the emergency and critical care center at Yokohama Rosai Hospital, a hospital designated to treat patients involved in the Games, said hosting the Olympics was meaningful.

“But I still wonder why the Games had to be held at that time of the year,” he said.

During the fifth wave of infections, half of the 22 beds assigned to COVID-19 patients were taken at his hospital.

Its Emergency Room handled more than 100 cases daily as a stream of people arrived by ambulance and other means, including COVID-19 patients as well as those suffering from heatstroke or sudden injuries.

Nakamori said the hospital some days had to refuse patients due to a lack of beds.

The Delta variant fueled the fifth wave, causing large numbers of serious cases, usually pneumonia.

But many patients desperate for special breathing apparatus could not be admitted to hospitals as medical institutions were overwhelmed by the influx of cases.

On July 8, 2021, the government declared an emergency for Tokyo over the novel coronavirus. Nearby Yokohama and the rest of Kanagawa Prefecture were placed under emergency measures on Aug. 2 while the Summer Games were still in progress.

Even after the Tokyo Olympics wound up on Aug. 8, the nation kept setting records on a daily basis.

On Aug. 13, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike made a plea at a news conference for residents in the capital to reconsider plans to return to their hometowns for visits with family members there.

“I am sorry, but please abandon your travel plans this year as well,” she said.

More than 200 people died at home without access to hospital care across the nation during the fifth wave.

(This article was compiled from reports by Yuki Edamatsu, Yuichiro Yoneda and Yoshinori Hayashi.)