This article documents the chronology of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2021, which originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Some developments may become known or fully understood only in retrospect. Reporting on this pandemic began in December 2019.
On 26 May, Asahi Shimbun, which is one of the Japanese mainstream media outlets and listed as Tokyo 2020 official sponsors, urged Japan's prime minister Yoshihide Suga to cancel the Tokyo Olympics. The newspaper pointed to widespread public opposition to the Olympics and criticised the International Olympic Committee for its heavy-handed insistence that the Games would go ahead this summer regardless of the coronavirus situation in Japan.[15]