The Winter Cup is Japan's biggest high school basketball tournament, but the 2020 edition is facing an unprecedented crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday, the Kaishi Kokusai High School boys team became the seventh squad to withdraw from the tournament since it kicked off on Wednesday.
Unlike in the other cases, however, no one from the school, which is located in Niigata Prefecture, tested positive for the virus or recorded a fever. The school was told to pull out because its players were deemed as close contacts due to a Thursday game against Tokyo's Senshu University High School, which reported a positive case within its team.
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