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May's Machi Asobi Vol.24 Event Canceled Due to COVID-19 Coronavirus Concerns
posted on by Egan Loo
The organizers of the Machi Asobi anime and game event announced on Friday that they have canceled Machi Asobi Vol.24, which Tokushima City would have hosted in May. The organizers cited the safety of visitors and the staff as the highest priority during the ongoing spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
The organizers are still preparing for Machi Asobi Vol.24 this fall, and will provide more information on the event's website and Twitter account.
The last Machi Asobi event, Machi Asobi Vol.23 Climax Run, was delayed from October 12-14 to October 26-27 due to Typhoon Hagibis (also known as Typhoon #19).
The ufotable Tokushima anime studio planned and produced the first Machi Asobi event in Tokushima in 2009, although ufotable is no longer the main organization in the event's production. The semiannual events have had more than 1 million attendees since they began.
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 World Health Organization (WHO) declared a world health emergency on January 30, and announced on March 11 that it is classifying the outbreak as a pandemic. As of Thursday, the WHO reported that there are 462,684 infected individuals worldwide. 20,834 individuals have died from the disease.
As of Thursday, the WHO reported that Japan has 1,291 cases of COVID-19 with 45 deaths. These numbers do not include the number of cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama. That cruise ship had 712 infected passengers with seven deaths.
Sources: Machi Asobi via Ota-suke
