Masaya Takahashi, the head of Tachikawa Sogo Hospital, looks over the medical records of a COVID-19 patient on July 23. (Naoko Kawamura)
Around 8 p.m. on July 23, as the Opening Ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics was getting under way, a hospital in the capital s western Tachikawa district began moving a COVID-19 patient with critical symptoms to its high care unit (HCU).
It seemed fitting that the Tachikawa Sogo Hospital chose that time of the evening to do so as it had long expressed its opposition to holding the sports extravaganza while Japan remains in the grip of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
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