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Ghibli Museum Delays April Ticket Sales After Closing Due to COVID-19 Coronavirus Concerns
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
The Ghibli Museum announced on Monday that it is delaying the sale of all tickets for April visits until the museum reopens. The museum had planned on starting general sales of April tickets on Tuesday. The museum is closed until March 17 due to concerns over the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and it has offered refunds for tickets dated through March 30.
In a separate development, game developer Niantic has postponed its "Safari Zone St. Louis" event for its Pokémon GO event, which was scheduled for March 27-29 in St. Louis, Missouri. The game is offering in-app refunds for tickets to the event. People who choose to keep their tickets will be able to access the event's encounters and Special Research during the Safari Zone's scheduled hours in local timezones. The game's next two Safari Zone events in Liverpool and Philadelphia are still planned to go forward for now, but the announcement stated that Niantic will reassess the situation in April.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said on February 27 that the government is asking elementary, junior high, and high schools to close until the end of spring break in early April to contain the spread of COVID-19. The government is also encouraging children and others to stay home and avoid large gatherings for the next few weeks. In March, venues and events such as Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea, Universal Studios Japan, Sanrio Puro Land, NAMJATOWN, and AnimeJapan are canceled or temporarily closed.
As of Tuesday, the WHO reported that Japan has 514 cases of COVID-19 with nine deaths. These numbers do not include the number of cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama. That cruise ship had 696 infected passengers and seven deaths.
The first reported cases of COVID-19 were in Wuhan, China in December, and then the disease began to spread in varying rates and intensities across many parts of the globe through incubation in human hosts. The WHO declared a world health emergency on January 30. As of Tuesday, the WHO reported that there are 113,702 infected individuals worldwide, with 80,924 of them in China. 3,140 individuals have died from the disease in China, and 872 have died outside China. The WHO raised its global risk assessment over the virus from "high" to "very high" on February 28.
