The ceremony of lighting the Olympic flame in Greece on Thursday will be held behind closed doors due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Greece's National Olympic Committee said in a statement on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th March, 2020) The ceremony of lighting the Olympic flame in Greece on Thursday will be held behind closed doors due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Greece's National Olympic Committee said in a statement on Monday.
"The Lighting Ceremony of the Olympic Flame will be held without the presence of spectators and will be attended by only 100 accredited guests from the International Olympic Committee [IOC] and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee," the statement says.
The dress rehearsal of the ceremony on Wednesday will take place without spectators and journalists, it says.
The Olympic flame lighting ceremony will be held on March 12 in Ancient Olympia. On March 19, it will be handed over to the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee at a stadium in Athens, and then the Olympic torch relay will be held throughout Greece for eight days.
As of Sunday, Greece detected 73 cases of infection with a new coronavirus.
The IOC said earlier that it was determined to successfully host the Tokyo Olympics, which is scheduled to take place from July 24 to August 9. The organizing committee of the Tokyo Olympics announced in February the creation of a special working group to monitor the situation with the coronavirus.
