Tourists don't just go to the festival; they enter restaurants, they go shopping. I don't think it's out of the question to think that while the festival was on, it made Odori Park (which runs through the center of the city) a starting point for group infections to take place in the heart of Sapporo.

Yoko Tsukamoto, a professor at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido specializing in infection control nursing. The Hokkaido prefectural capital's premier event, the Sapporo Snow Festival, has come under suspicion by the city government for having possibly further spread the new coronavirus or triggered group infections.

© Mainichi Shimbun