Japan baseball halted minor league practice games for a seven-day period from March 31 to April 6, Nippon Professional Baseball announced Monday.

When Opening Day was pushed back to its current target date of April 24, the leagues suspended the first-team practice games that had been taking the place of regular-season games.

Here is a link to my coronavirus-NPB timeline

Three Pacific League teams, the SoftBank Hawks, Lotte Marines and Rakuten Eagles had already suspended baseball activities and ordered their people to refrain from going out except on essential business, while the Central League’s Yomiuri Giants and DeNA BayStars followed suit on Monday.