Tokyo organisers say Olympics are safe

Tokyo, Osaka and many other prefectures are under a state of emergency and health-care systems are being stretched.

Tokyo: The IOC wraps up its final planning sessions on Friday with Tokyo Olympic organisers, just two months before the games are to open. Much of the focus is on persuading a skeptical public and medical community that the games should go ahead.

“We have much to do over the next three days,” IOC Vice President John Coates said on Wednesday as the sessions began. The core problem is that 60 to 80 per cent of people in Japan, depending how the question is asked in public opinion polls, don’t want the postponed Olympics to open in the middle of a pandemic despite repeated assurances from organisers that games will be “safe and secure.” There is no indication so far the games will be cancelled. The International Olympic Committee has repeatedly said they are going ahead.

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But the IOC’s most senior member Richard Pound, in an interview with Japan’s JiJi Press, said that the final deadline to call it off was still a month away. “Before the end of June, you really need to know, yes or no,” JiJi quoted Pound as saying. Pound repeated — as the IOC has said — that if the games can’t happen now they will be cancelled, not postponed again.

Kaori Yamaguchi, a bronze medalist in judo in the 1988 Olympics and a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, hinted in an interview with Japan’s Kyodo news agency this week that organisers were cornered. She has been skeptical about going ahead. “We’re starting to reach a point where we can’t even cancel anymore,” she said.

Tokyo, Osaka and many other prefectures are under a state of emergency and health-care systems are being stretched. Emergency measures are to end on May 31, but they are likely to be extended and approach the July 23 opening date.

“If the current situation continues, I hope the government will have the wisdom not to end the emergency at the end of May,” Haruo Ozaki, head of the Tokyo Medical Association, told the weekly magazine Aera.

Ozaki has consistently said government measures to control the spread of COVID-19 have been insufficient. About 12,000 deaths in Japan are attributed to the virus, and the situation is exacerbated since few in Japan has been fully vaccinated.

Ozaki warned that if the emergency conditions are not extended, the virus and contagious variants will spread quickly.

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